Brian X. Chen

From the moment “The Farewell” opens, its main characters tell lies that flow from their mouths smoothly and deliberately, as if they are speaking in code.

Many people of East Asian descent may be fluent in this code. I know I am.

There are the petty lies that Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese American artist in New York, and Nai Nai, her grandmother in China, tell each other on the phone. Billi, in chilly Brooklyn, assures Nai Nai that she’s wearing a hat. She’s not. Nai Nai says she’s visiting her sister, but she’s actually in the hospital.

They’re lying to avoid worrying each other, but that’s nothing compared with the core untruth, that Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) has terminal lung cancer, and the family knows but won’t tell her. Anxiety over the diagnosis, Billi’s relatives argue, could kill her before the cancer.

When I first heard about “The Farewell,” the premise struck me as bizarre. The idea of concealing a health diagnosis was appalling to this Chinese American. But when I watched the film recently, I found it to be incredibly powerful. Not only did the story remind me of my own family’s great lie, but it also reopened old wounds.

When I was a teenager, my parents, both immigrants, got divorced, and what was most confusing was the aftermath. We never had a discussion about how things would change. We didn’t tell family friends or relatives. Instead, we pretended as though nothing had happened. My father did not move out; he slept in a separate room. When we saw relatives for dinner, we acted as a cohesive family, and I was told not to frown.

While I could relate to Billi, who was instructed to hide her grief in front of Nai Nai, I lacked a clear sense of the cultural rationale behind the lies. If Billi’s family and mine were any indication of how some Chinese families solve problems, I wondered, why don’t we just put everything out in the open so everyone can have a say in a solution? And why do we insist on creating the illusion that everything is OK?

I posed these questions to Jeff Mio, a professor of multicultural psychology at California Polytechnic State University. He was quick to correct me.

“It isn’t that Asians avoid difficult topics, but rather that Asians tend to have indirect communication,” Mio said.

In indirect communication, also known as high-context communication, what’s not said is more important than what is said. Eastern philosophy emphasizes balance and harmony, and indirect communication minimizes conflict. So some Asian cultures prefer communicating in a “show, don’t tell” manner and value the ability to decode indirect messages.

In the film, repressing truth is indirect communication taken to an extreme. The family members show their love for Nai Nai by keeping mum about her condition.

Mio gave the example of a man asking a woman out on a date Saturday. The woman could reject him by saying, “I would never go out with you.” Or she could say, “I think I’m busy on Saturday.”

The direct rejection sounds harsh and abrupt, which could make both people feel bad. The indirect answer, though ambiguous, does a better job of minimizing conflict, sparing the wooer’s feelings while making it easier for the person doing the rejecting. Both get to save face.

The notion of saving face — maintaining dignity and control over one’s emotions — is largely derived from collectivism, an Eastern concept that no person is an island; we are each part of a shared consciousness and represent a group.

“If you’re acting in a way that can embarrass you, in a Western society a parent might say you’re embarrassing yourself, but an Asian parent would say you’re embarrassing my family,” Mio said.

In the film, Billi’s uncle sums it up this way when his niece is contemplating telling Nai Nai the truth: “You think one’s life belongs to one’s self.” Billi’s relatives have reached consensus about what’s best for Nai Nai and, by extension, for the family as a whole.

The more I talked to people about the film, the less foreign its premise became. Family stories like that of “The Farewell” aren’t the norm in Asian cultures, but they also aren’t unheard of.

Guy Aoki, a civil rights activist with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, said that when his grandfather, who grew up in Hawaii, was dying of stomach cancer in 1962, the doctor never informed the patient about his prognosis.

“I remember saying to my mother: ‘Why didn’t you let him know? He’s got to say his goodbyes,’ ” Aoki recalled. The decision is still bewildering today to Aoki, a fourth-generation Japanese American.

Nancy Yuen, a sociologist and author of the book “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism,” had an inverse experience. When her mother learned she had lung cancer, Yuen was kept in the dark. She found out about the illness from her aunt, and even after she began accompanying her mother to radiation treatments, they didn’t talk about her condition. Her mother died about two years later in 2008.

“When she was sick, all we did was eat out a lot,” she said. “She never said the word ‘cancer’ ever.”

Yuen had believed that her mother’s behavior was idiosyncratic. But after viewing “The Farewell,” she considered the possibility that her mother hid her illness for cultural reasons — to avoid burdening the family.

Throughout the film, Billi repeatedly challenges her family and struggles to grasp the concept of collectivism just as much as she struggles to speak Mandarin. The language gap demonstrates the limits of her ability to understand her family’s culture: She agrees to keep the secret but, at heart, disagrees with the decision.

Similarly, I rejected the way my parents handled their divorce. But the film left me with a compassionate theory — that perhaps they created the mirage of a functional family with the intention of saving face and preserving harmony. As an Asian American, maybe all I’ll ever have is a secondhand understanding, and that’s the best I can do.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/movies/the-farewell-family-lies.html" id="2d83330b-d380-3d1f-a17c-9939a65c0e33">The New York Times</a>.

(Critic’s Notebook)

Truth, Lies and Culture in 'The Farewell'

That might sound like a mouthful, but it has become essential for our digital protection. What it stands for is basically two steps to verify that you are who you say you are, so that even if a password falls into the hands of the wrong people, they cannot pretend to be you.

Here’s how two-factor authentication has generally worked: Say, for instance, you enter your user name and password to get into your online bank account. That’s step one. The bank then sends a text message to your phone with a temporary code that must be punched in before the site lets you log in. That’s step two. In this way, you prove your identity by having access to your phone and that code.

Sounds simple and safer, right? Yet barely anyone uses it. According to Google, fewer than 10 percent of its users have signed up for two-factor authentication to protect their Google accounts for services including email, photos and calendars.

“It’s really, really hard to get a user to sign up,” said Guemmy Kim, Google’s head of account security. “It sounds cumbersome.”

In reality, it isn’t that complicated. And in recent years, the technique has evolved to become more secure and, in some cases, even easier to use.

That’s because in addition to receiving text messages, you can now log in by using codes shown in an app, by plugging in a physical security key or by setting up your phone to receive a notification and hitting a button. More on that below.

Using just one or two of these methods will go a long way toward preventing an inappropriate person, like a jealous ex or a hacker, from getting access to your account. So here’s a guide to four ways of setting up two-factor authentication on some of the most popular sites — and the pros and cons of each method.

Securing Your Instagram Account With Text-Messaged Codes

Let’s start by setting up your Instagram account with traditional two-factor authentication using text messages. This is the most common verification technique across apps and websites, though it has some of the biggest vulnerabilities.

— Inside your Instagram app, open settings, then tap privacy and security and select two-factor authentication.

— Enter your phone number. You will receive a text message containing a six-digit code. Enter the code.

— From now on, whenever you log in to your Instagram account, you will receive a text message containing a temporary code. This must be entered before you log in.

Pros: This method is super easy: You do not need to install any additional apps on your phone to receive texts. And if you lose your device or switch to a new phone, you can still receive your login codes as long as you have the same phone number.

Cons: Phone numbers and text messages are susceptible to phishing or hijacking by hackers (though this is unlikely to happen unless you are a high-profile target such as a well-known activist). If you travel abroad, receiving text messages on a foreign carrier can be pricey. And there are security risks in receiving texts on foreign networks in countries with heavy surveillance such as China and Russia.

Setting Up an App to Authenticate Your Facebook Account

Another way to start two-factor authentication is to receive a temporary code via a authenticator app. For this example, let’s protect your Facebook account with such an app.

— On your phone, open your app store and download a free authenticator app, like Google Authenticator or Authy.

— Then on Facebook’s website, go to your security and login settings. Click “use two-factor authentication,” then “get started.” After re-entering your password, choose authentication app as your security method. From here, follow the onscreen instructions.

— From now on, whenever you log in to Facebook, you can open the authenticator app and look at the temporary six-digit code generated for your Facebook account. You must enter this code before being able to log in.

Pros: You do not need an internet or a cellphone connection to receive a code via an authentication app. Most important, a hijacker can’t easily steal your codes from an authenticator app.

Cons: If you lose your phone or switch to a new one, you have to regain access to your account through a recovery method such as entering a backup code or asking the app provider to reset your account. That can be time consuming.

Setting up Google Prompt on Google Mail

Google Prompt is a relatively new authentication feature for securing Google accounts. Instead of receiving a text message with a code, you receive a notification through a Google app asking whether the person trying to sign in is you. Hitting “Yes” logs you in.

— On Gmail.com, go to your account settings and click “security.” Click 2-Step Verification, and then click Add Google Prompt.

— Click Get Started and select your smartphone.

— On your phone, open the Google or Gmail app. Google will show a device trying to log in to your account. Tap Yes on the prompt.

— From now on, whenever you log in to your Gmail account, the Gmail or Google app will ask whether the person seeking access is you. Hitting Yes will log you in.

Pros: It’s easy. Receiving a notification requires only an internet connection. Selecting Yes is faster than typing in a code.

Cons: Not all apps and sites have a prompt-based verification method, meaning your banking site, for example, may still text you a temporary code. If your internet connection is spotty, you may also have a difficult time receiving the prompt.

Securing Your Twitter Account With a Physical Key

Last, let’s go over the most physical two-factor authentication method, which involves plugging in a key. Google was one of the first to introduce a security key program in 2017, and many websites, including Twitter and Facebook, have since adopted the method.

Here’s how to secure a Twitter account with a security key:

— Buy a security key, such as Google’s $50 Titan security key bundle.

— On Twitter’s website, go to your account settings and click “Set up login verification.” Enter your phone number, and then punch in the code you receive via text message.

— In “Security key,” click set up. Insert the security key into a USB port, and press the button on the key. Press the button again to verify the key.

— The next time you log in to Twitter, click “Choose different verification method” and select “Use your security key.” After plugging the key into your computer, you will be able to log in.

Pros: For people who are extra paranoid about being phished or hacked, this is one of the most secure authentication methods because physical access to your key is required for logging in.

Cons: The keys cost money. What’s more, some sites require you to insert the key every time, so if you forget to carry your key, logging in with a backup method can be complicated. And not all web browsers support logging in with security keys.

This article originally appeared in <a id="141a99c5-9c66-4c51-996b-fad8b1ed9b71" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/technology/personaltech/two-step-authentication.html">The New York Times</a>.

Protecting Your Internet Accounts Keeps Getting Easier. Here's How to Do It.

(Circuits) ; (Tech Fix): When Facebook revealed last week that it had stored millions of people’s account passwords in an insecure format, it underlined the importance of a security setting that many of us neglect to use: two-factor authentication.

Protecting your internet accounts keeps getting easier. Here's how to do it

I can tell you more about that: I permanently deleted my Facebook account five months ago.

So what has happened in the aftermath?

The social network’s long-stated mission has been to connect people so that we can live in a more open world. But after being off Facebook since October, I found that I did not feel less connected and that my social life didn’t suffer, even though I was no longer seeing status updates and pictures on my News Feed.

My friends and I continued making plans over email and messaging apps. So did my family. Same old, same old.

There were some differences, though — including some strange experiences with online ads. Facebook has long used information that it collects on its users to target people with the most relevant ads. So after a few months of deleting the social network, I began seeing random ads pop up on sites like Instagram (which Facebook owns). Among them: promotions for women’s shaving products, purses and bathing suits.

Instagram might have started thinking I was female, but my wallet thanked me. I realized I was spending considerably less money on my usual guilty pleasure of buying clothing and cooking gadgets online because I was no longer seeing the relevant Facebook ads that egged me on to splurge. Over the past five months, my online shopping purchases dropped about 43 percent.

So what about FOMO, otherwise known as a fear of missing out, typically induced by social media? That is often one of the biggest reasons people are afraid to quit Facebook. What if they didn’t see that post about an outing with a distant friend? Or a party invitation shared on the social network?

For me, it turned out that without Facebook, there wasn’t much I really missed out on — except targeted ads. Here’s more of what I learned.

— I don’t miss my ‘friends’

Over the 14 years that I used Facebook, I accrued about 500 friends. Most were former classmates whom I had lost touch with.

In my real life, I have about 20 friends I talk to on a regular basis. So when I finally deleted Facebook, the fallout was underwhelming.

Those same friends kept in touch over iMessage, Signal or email. We still get dinner or go to the movies together. I can think of one friend who exclusively used Facebook Messenger to communicate — we email now and talk less than we used to, but when we meet in person we are as close as we always were. And I can’t remember the last time I attended an event that I was invited to via Facebook, so I never had a case of FOMO.

I can also tell you what I absolutely don’t miss about Facebook: the people who frequently posted online quizzes, political news stories or their thoughts about current events on the site. Occasionally, there were funny or interesting posts, but ultimately most were time wasters.

Recently, I also started reading more books. Could it be because I’m no longer expending my energy reading Facebook?

— Advertisers gave up on stalking me

Brands have long been able to target us with ads through Facebook’s tools. You might see an ad on Facebook for a watch, for instance, because a watch company used the tools to upload your email address and leverage other data that the social network has on you — like your age or the fact that you follow Timex’s Facebook page.

When you browse sites outside Facebook, the company can still track your browsing activity to help brands serve you targeted ads. After visiting a website for a pair of shoes, for example, you might see an ad for those shoes — or similar ones — when you go to another site.

The social network uses a variety of approaches to collect information about web users. One involves Facebook pixel, an invisible tracker that brands can embed into their websites. When you load a website for a brand, Facebook pixel sends information about the device and its browsing activities back to the company. The social network can then use that information to help brands target you.

When I deleted Facebook, I wanted all of that ad targeting to go away. So not only did I erase my Facebook account, I also installed tracker blockers on my computer browser and mobile devices to prevent advertisers from using web cookies and invisible tracking pixels like Facebook’s.

The extra steps worked. The onslaught of targeted online ads stopped.

“If you have the tracker blocker and deleted your Facebook account, you’ve exited,” said Gabriel Weinberg, the chief executive of DuckDuckGo, which offers internet privacy tools including a web browser that blocks trackers.

Facebook says it does not build profiles on people who are not on the social network, nor does it serve targeted ads to them. “Sites and apps send us information about the people who visit them, regardless of whether that person has a Facebook profile,” the company said in a statement. “If you aren’t a Facebook user, we don’t know who you are and don’t build any kind of profile on you.”

Advertisers still have methods other than Facebook to chase me around, but there are economic reasons for them to give up. With Facebook’s tools, it was relatively affordable and effective for them to track and target me. Without those, it gets a lot more costly.

“You might be too expensive for them to chase,” said Michael Priem, the chief executive of Modern Impact, an advertising firm in Minneapolis.

— My spending dropped. A lot.

Facebook has often defended targeted ads by saying that internet users are annoyed when they see irrelevant ads. I disagree. Yes, the ads I now see have nothing to do with me — but the benefit was watching my spending drop immensely.

About a year ago, I recall shopping on the site for Taylor Stitch, a men’s clothing retailer. I looked at a coat and closed the window after deciding not to buy it. Then over the next weeks, an ad for that coat loaded on Facebook, inside Instagram and on other websites. Guess what happened? I bought it.

After deleting Facebook, I have more often canceled online purchases after asking myself: Do I need another plaid shirt, frying pan or cocktail shaker? The answer was always no. And as there is now nothing to change my mind, my credit card remains sheathed.

I opened Mint, the budget tracking tool, to get a clear picture of how much I was saving. From October to mid-March, I spent about $341 on clothing and $1,100 on Amazon purchases.

That was a significant drop from my internet shopping sprees before I deleted Facebook. From October 2017 to mid-March of 2018, I spent $1,008 on clothing and $1,542 on Amazon. Gulp.

— Instagram thinks I’m a woman

For years, I saw ads on my personal Instagram account for men’s boots, briefcases and video games. Now, I’m getting ads for products like women’s razors and brassieres.

I have a theory for the change, which Facebook didn’t dispute: Having no Facebook account means Instagram is missing big pieces of accompanying information about who I am and what I like. So it may be lacking signals to serve the correct ads.

And because my fiancée and I both run our dog’s Instagram account and interact with it from our personal accounts and our own devices, some wires may have been crossed and Instagram now thinks I’m female. (Instagram does not require people to share their gender when signing up for accounts.)

That’s a bit odd, but I’m not annoyed. Instead, I find the irrelevant ads amusing. At least they give me ideas for future gifts.

This article originally appeared in <a id="5b7e8362-ce7c-404f-8af5-bc960d45c6b5" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/technology/personaltech/i-deleted-facebook-last-year-heres-what-changed-and-what-didnt.html">The New York Times</a>.

I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here's What Changed (and What Didn't).

(Circuits): When Facebook and its family of apps experienced a daylong malfunction last week, millions of people got a taste of what life would be like if the social network were out of their lives for good.

I deleted Facebook last year, here's what changed (and what didn't).

<h1>With a new year and a new Netflix show that features the Japanese organizing guru Marie Kondo on the art of “Tidying Up,” many of us are experimenting with how to simplify our lives by purging our homes of unwanted possessions.</h1>

But what about the stuff we don’t see?

Think about the digital junk we hoard, like the tens of thousands of photos bloating our smartphones or the backlog of files cluttering our computer drives, such as old work presentations, expense receipts and screenshots we have not opened in years.

In addition to the digital mess, tech hardware adds to the pile of junk that sparks no joy in our lives. Everyone has a drawer full of ancient cellphones, tangled-up wires and earphones that are never touched. And the things we do use every day, like charging cables strewn around the house, are an eyesore.

Why are people so terrible about tech hoarding? Cary Fortin, a professional organizer for the company New Minimalism, summed it up: “We don’t really think about the cost of holding on to things, but we think about the cost of needing it one day and not having it.”

Don’t fret, dear reader. As a technology critic who tests dozens of gadgets a year, I’m in a unique position of having to wrestle with an extraordinary number of tech products and accessories every day. (Last year, I brought nine new smartphones, two tablets, four smart speakers and 14 power accessories into my home.) So here’s a guide to tidying up your technology physically and digitally, including tips from professional organizers.

— HOW TO DECLUTTER YOUR POWER CABLES

The No. 1 culprit of tech clutter in every household, professional organizers say, is the power cable. Part of the problem is that we typically need different wires for products like smartphones, battery packs, cameras and laptops. These then accumulates into one tangled mess.

Here’s how to solve power cable overpopulation in a few simple steps:

Gather them all together and purge the ones you don’t need.

This sounds easier said than done, but here’s a good rule of thumb: “If you don’t know what it goes to, get rid of it,” said Marissa Hagmeyer, an organization consultant and co-owner of Neat Method. Among the wires you keep, if there are extras, cap them at two, such as two Micro USB cables, she said.

In the process, you may end up discarding a wire that you later need. But don’t beat yourself up. “You can buy a new one if it turns out you needed it,” Fortin said. That’s better than wasting space on something you might hypothetically need.

The same approach can be applied to other tech gadgets, like the obsolete smartphone that is living in your sock drawer. If you haven’t used it for six months, get rid of it. Unwanted tech accessories and gadgets can be discarded responsibly through donation centers or e-recycling programs like Best Buy’s.

Have a designated place for all your tech accessories.

Pick somewhere in your home where your various wires will live, like a closet, cabinet or drawer.From there, categorize the wires and give them compartments. I separate my different types of wires — earbuds, phone chargers, miscellaneous USB cables and computer chargers — into Ziploc bags and label them with a label maker. All the bags live in a drawer in my TV stand.

There are different approaches to organizing your power cables. Families with children could give each member a compartment. For example, put your son Joe’s iPhone charger, laptop charger and earbuds into one Ziploc bag and label it “Joe’s tech.”

This step is a must. “If you don’t have a dedicated place for your items, then you’re wasting your time finding them,” said Keith Bartolomei, a professional organizer for Zen Habitat.

Hide wires that live out in the open.

Even if you find a place to stash your spare cables, you probably have a few left plugged in all day. To tidy them up, there are methods to hide the wires or, at the very least, keep them off the floor.

Bartolomei recommends using twisty wires and rubber bands to keep wires wrapped around furniture, like desk legs. There are also products for bundling up and concealing wires, like fabric sleeves or boxes that cover your surge protector. My approach to keeping wires off the ground is to run them through magnetic buckles that clip onto a metal side table.

— HOW TO RESIST DIGITAL HOARDING

Tidying up your digital media may not feel worthwhile because your files are not visible in the real world. Yet holding on to all the data takes up valuable space on devices while also making important files more difficult to find. The professionals recommended a process of purging and labeling what’s left. Here’s how it would work:

Do an annual clearance of the files you no longer need.

To streamline this process on a computer, open a folder and sort the files by when they were last opened. From there, you can immediately eliminate the files you have not opened in years.

On your smartphone, prune unnecessary apps that are taking up space. On iPhones, Apple offers the tool iPhone Storage, which shows a list of apps that take up the most data and when they were last used; on Android devices, Google offers a similar tool called Files. From here, you can home in on the data hogs and delete the apps you have not touched in months.

Manage your enormous photo library.

Eradicating photos is the most challenging process, the professional organizers agreed, because the thought of deleting your memories may be painful. But photos are some of the biggest data hogs of all, so some periodic maintenance is crucial.

Start by trimming out the easy ones: duplicate photos, blurry shots and old screenshots.

Then move on to the harder part: deleting the photos that were decent but not your favorites. Bartolomei said people could look at each photo and ask themselves a few questions: “Is this something you want to see again? Does it make you happy? Do you want to spend more time with this photo in the future?” If you answer no to any of those questions, the photo can probably go in the trash bin.

My approach to managing digital photos is to purge everything without doing any organization at all. I use Google Photos, which automatically backs each shot to the cloud, compiles photos into albums and includes a tool for removing images from the device. (I also back up all my photos to an external drive in case I ever become unhappy with Google Photos.) Then I erase all the photos from my iPhone every six months and pay Google $2 a month to manage thousands of my photos at full resolution.

Whatever approach you take, don’t skimp on tidying up your data. Even if it doesn’t use up physical room, it can still cause you harm.

“It takes up so much psychic space and brings up the same negative effect: anxiety,” Fortin said. “Since we all have our phones in our pockets, we’re toting our clutter around with us.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="80727268-0a8b-4120-919e-6b6ae888e8f4" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/technology/personaltech/declutter-organize-personal-tech-few-simple-steps.html">The New York Times</a>.

How to Declutter and Organize Your Personal Tech in a Few Simple Steps

Think about the digital junk we hoard, like the tens of thousands of photos bloating our smartphones or the backlog of files cluttering our computer drives, such as old work presentations, expense receipts and screenshots we have not opened in years.

How to declutter and organize your personal tech in a few simple steps

<h1>LAS VEGAS — The show must go on.</h1>

That sentiment couldn’t have been stronger this week at CES, the largest consumer electronics convention in the country. The conference, which brought more than 180,000 people to Las Vegas, was a reminder of what the tech industry is best at: being optimistic about itself.

Who cares about the abysmal stock market and growing fears that we are sliding into a recession? Check out these virtual-reality headsets, self-driving cars and big-screen TVs.

Filippo Yacob, a tech entrepreneur who attended, was blasé about the state of the market. “The speed of progress and innovation happens at such a rapid pace that it’s not like it pulses with the stock market,” said Yacob, whose company Primo Toys makes tech products for children. “It’s more like a bullet train.”

This year’s event was also slightly larger than the last, with more than 4,500 exhibitors sprawled across 2.7 million square feet. The conference offered a peek at the year’s hottest tech trends, including artificially intelligent virtual assistants, next-generation wireless networks and connected cars.

And companies unveiled thousands of products. Google and Amazon showed car accessories, alarm clocks and speakers that can be controlled with their virtual assistants by speaking commands like “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?” or “Alexa, what’s my sports update?”

LG lured attendees into its giant booth with televisions that can be rolled up as if they were yoga mats.

Wireless carriers and chipmakers highlighted 5G, the next-generation cellular network arriving this year in a small number of cities with data speeds so zippy that devices can download an entire movie in seconds.

The most surprising news came when a host of tech companies announced they were working with Apple to bring some of the company’s content and virtual assistant capabilities to their devices.

Vizio, the TV maker, said its newer TVs would work with AirPlay, an Apple software feature for streaming video and audio content from an iPhone or Mac to a television screen. People will be able to speak to Siri on their iPhones to play content they had purchased from iTunes on the Vizio TVs. Samsung, Sony and LG announced similar partnerships with Apple.

In the past, AirPlay and iTunes videos were mostly tied to Apple-made hardware like the Apple TV set-top box. Their expansion to third parties underlines Apple’s ambition to expand the revenue it generates from its internet content and services. That’s especially important now that sales of Apple’s cash cow, the iPhone, are slowing. This month, the company reduced its revenue expectations for the first time in 16 years.

The move is also notable because it illustrates an unusual willingness by Apple to open its technology to other companies, including competitors like Samsung.

In a statement provided by Samsung, Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of internet software and services, said that with the expansion of iTunes and AirPlay, “iPhone, iPad and Mac users have yet another way to enjoy all their favorite content on the biggest screen in their home.”

Front and center at CES was the battle between virtual assistants — namely Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant. Google erected an enormous outdoor booth to show off the multitude of devices that now work with Assistant, including smart watches, speakers and displays. The company said 1 billion devices now work with its assistant, up from 400 million last year. Google wants to make the Assistant the focal point of a consumer’s life: in the home, in the car and on mobile devices.

“When I walk down the aisle at Home Depot, will all the devices I might buy work with the Assistant?” Nick Fox, a Google executive who oversees Assistant, said of items like smoke detectors and thermostats. “The answer is yes.”

Amazon also had a large presence at the show. It filled a large conference room at the Venetian hotel with dozens of products that work with Alexa, including an Audi car, a motorcycle helmet and a stereo system.

The battle among virtual assistants is shaping up to be very different from past platform wars between tech companies because consumers will have more choices. Many of the smart gadgets at CES worked with multiple virtual assistants.

Aaron Emigh, chief executive of Brilliant, which makes smart home products that work with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, said it was critical for virtual assistants to work together, not against one another, because the smart home was already too complex, with products like light switches, thermostats and cameras coming from different brands.

“The more technology and the more different vendors that get put in your home, the more important that it all works together,” he said.

Car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz and BMW showed off concepts of autonomous vehicles powered by artificial intelligence and 5G wireless connections. But consumers won’t be able to buy self-driving vehicles from a dealership anytime soon, in part because companies still need much more data on how people drive cars. Smarter cars with features like built-in voice assistants to help people use maps, play music or get a sports update without taking their eyes off the road are available now, however.

If the economy does cool off, sales of cutting-edge gadgets will drop. Fast. But that didn’t faze people here. None of the CES attendees I spoke to expressed concern.

Matt Strauss, a Comcast executive who oversees the company’s Xfinity internet and cable service, was especially bullish about the year ahead. He said just about everything announced at CES required an internet connection, so that’s the last thing that people would cut off.

“It’s become like oxygen,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="02b6333e-d892-4605-a28b-b3a296fc7a9c" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/technology/ces.html">The New York Times</a>.

Tech Industry Expo Opens Portal to Tomorrow

Who cares about the abysmal stock market and growing fears that we are sliding into a recession? Check out these virtual-reality headsets, self-driving cars and big-screen TVs.

Tech industry expo opens portal to tomorrow

Facebook made headlines week after week for failing to protect our privacy and for spreading misinformation. Juul, the e-cigarette company under investigation for marketing products to teenagers, emerged as the Joe Camel of the digital era. And don’t get me started on just how intrusive online advertising has become.

On the other hand, there was good technology this year that improved how we live, like parental controls to curb smartphone addiction and a web browser with built-in privacy protections.

For the last two years, I’ve reviewed the tech that needed the most fixing and the tech that was fixed for the first time. This year, I’m repeating the tradition in hopes that the list of lows gets shorter and the list of highs gets longer over time.

Social media

Facebook this year was analogous to a cheating romantic partner who was caught betraying us and apologized — only to be caught again weeks later.

The social network admitted that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, had improperly gained access to the data of millions. Later, the company confessed that a security breach had exposed the data of 30 million accounts. This month, a New York Times investigation revealed that Facebook gave tech giants like Netflix and Spotify special access to user data, including private messages.

Other social media companies also stumbled. Twitter came under fire for being slow to react to Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who regularly spread misinformation, including that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. Even after Facebook, Apple, YouTube and others took down Jones’ content in early August, Twitter said his posts had not violated the company’s policies. After several more weeks, Twitter barred Jones in response to reports of abusive behavior.

Google’s YouTube, long adored as a venue for people to share music videos, food recipes and DIY home improvement projects, also had a tough year. The video-sharing site said it had removed 39 channels that were linked to an Iranian disinformation campaign.

The bottom line: Social media companies demonstrated they could barely be trusted with our data and were still trying to get a handle on all of their issues. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution for problems like hate speech and misinformation. And keeping our information private is not really in the interest of many of these companies, which use our data to target us with digital advertising.

Online advertising

Speaking of which: Online ads became so intrusive in 2018 that they increasingly ruined people’s web-browsing experiences and raised more hackles about privacy.

The online ads industry became so good at tracking our web browsing activities that it increasingly knew precisely what we were thinking about buying. If you did a web search for a blender, for example, you could be certain that a digital ad for that blender would follow you around. In addition, the autoplay videos embedded on many news sites were ruthless about shouting for our attention while draining our batteries and burning through data plans.

Fortunately, there are solutions for this, which I outlined in several articles this year about how the web is breaking. They included installing ad and tracker blockers, downloading add-ons that stop auto-play videos from loading and changing some browser settings.

These fixes are not ideal because they take a long time to put in place, and blocking ads hurts media businesses. That means there’s work to do on this yet.

Juul

E-cigarettes, or vape devices like Juul, have been a useful aid for adult smokers to give up cigarettes. But for teenagers, vapes have replaced cigarettes as a gateway to addictive substances. According to the 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey, about 3.6 million middle and high school students currently vape, up from 280,000 in 2011.

The Food and Drug Administration this year announced restrictions that allowed stores to sell most flavored e-cigarettes only in areas where minors were not permitted. The agency also said it was investigating whether Juul, which accounts for more than 70 percent of e-cigarette sales, intentionally marketed its products to youths. Juul has since suspended its social media promotions.

But the damage has been done. While e-cigarettes don’t produce the carcinogenic smoke that cigarettes do, they deliver lots of nicotine and harmful chemicals. Parents are reeling over the effect on teenage brains.

Smartphone parental controls

E-cigarettes notwithstanding, at least parents can worry less about their children’s addiction to smartphones. This year, Apple released Screen Time, a feature for people to set restrictions on the amount of time they spend on their iPhones. The software includes the ability for parents to remotely monitor and limit their children’s iPhone use.

I tested Screen Time for three weeks with a colleague’s daughter and was thrilled to see that the curbs helped the screenager cut iPhone use down to about three hours a day from roughly six hours. (The constraints I set on myself were not as effective because I could easily override them as a parent.)

There’s still room for smartphone parental controls to improve. Google offers Family Link, a comprehensive parental controls tool for Android phones. Yet the software has major limitations, as children can turn off the features once they turn 13 — which seems like precisely the time when you would want to be monitoring your child’s phone.

A browser for the people

Remember Firefox? Over the last decade, the once prominent web browser became irrelevant after Google released Chrome, a speedier and more secure web browser. Then late last year, Mozilla released a redesign of Firefox with thoughtful privacy features and much faster browsing speeds.

This year, Mozilla kept polishing and expanding on Firefox’s capabilities. It released a “container” that can be installed to prevent Facebook from tracking your activities across the web. In August, Mozilla also said that it would, by default, turn on anti-tracking features to prevent third parties, including advertisers, from snooping.

Firefox could still be better. Chrome, for instance, is still faster at loading some web pages. But after a harsh year when consumers lost faith in how companies like Facebook managed their data, it feels heartening to know that someone in the tech industry is making a browser for the people.

So did we get to a shorter list of personal tech lows and a longer list of highs? Not quite. I guess there’s always next year.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/technology/personaltech/tech-fix-2018.html" id="f0a7dfda-6585-375e-a3fd-6941bf79ff6d">The New York Times</a>.

The Tech That Was Fixed in 2018 and the Tech That Still Needs Fixing

Personal technology was so awful this year that nobody would think you were paranoid if you dug a hole and buried your computer, phone and smart speaker under 6 feet of earth.