A collection of new apps in Google’s Digital Wellbeing Experimentsplatform wants to help you find a balance with technology

Android mobile devices put the internet at yourfingertips, but if your smartphone use isemerging into an addictive territory, Googleis fine with you using them a bit less.

The Mountain View-based company recently an-nounced its Digital Wellbeing Experiments platform,a collection of new apps that guide users in findingtheir balance with technology.

It has released six apps on the PlayStore already, and there are certainlymore on the way. All of them are taskedwith getting you to understand the placetechnology has in your life and how it canbe healthier to focus on certain activitiesabove others. Here are the initial Digital Well-being Experiments apps:

Now, each time youunlock your device,

the clock moves for-ward by one number.

The idea behind this app is to limit how often notifications are thrown at you. Instead of delivering them all at once,Post Box gathers your noti-fications through the dayand delivers them in anorganised way up to fourtimes daily.

It helps you minimise distractions,by holding your noti-fications until a time

that suits you

Paper Phone helps you takea little break away from

your digital world byprinting a personalbooklet of the key information you’ll needthat day. The app lets you choose what toinclude such as favourite contacts, mapsand meetings and then prints themdirectly to a sheet of paper.

This app enables you toswitch off from technologyas a group, to spend qualitytime together. Just wait foreveryone to join, then flipthe switch together to beginyour session. If someone inthe group unlocks, the ses-sion will end, and you willbe able to see how you did.

It lets you spend qual-ity time together,switching off from

technology as a groupMorph helps you stayfocused, by adapting yourphone to what you are doing.Think about how you divideyour time and choose theapps that are most importantto you in each mode. Basedon time or place, your phonewill automatically adapt —giving you the right apps atthe right time.

MORPH

It enables you tostay focused by get-ting the right apps at

the right time

PAPER PHONE

It helps you findfocus by going a day

with only your essential apps

DESERT ISLAND

MOBILE ROBOT TO INSPECT THELUNAR SURFACE FOR WATER

Nasa is sending anew rover to theMoon’s mysteri-ous south pole. If

successful, the machine willbe the first-ever to land onthe Moon’s south pole with-out crashing. It will map thearea’s water ice for the firsttime – information that willbe crucial to future astro-nauts making extended vis-its to the Moon. It will alsouse a drill to collect data ondifferent lunar soils.

The golf cart-sized robotis called Volatiles Investi-gating Polar ExplorationRover, or Viper. It’s scheduledto land in December 2022 andspend about 100 days col-lecting data. Nasa plans touse it to build the first glob-al water resource maps ofthe Moon.

Lunar horizonIn its Artemis program, theagency plans to send astro-nauts to the lunar southpole in 2024 and also builda permanent Moon base. As-tronauts living there willpossibly need to harvest wa-ter ice from the area, so theycan break it down into oxy-gen (for breathing) and hy-drogen (for fuel).

Landing a rover on theMoon is a complicated en-deavour. Moon landers mustsuccessfully carry out a seriesof complex commands whilecontending with its wonkygravity and terrain.

Harvesting waterHarvesting the Moon’s wa-ter is vital if Nasa wants toset up base there and spring-board to Mars. Astronautstravelling to Mars wouldneed to make their jet fuel onthe Moon.

The lunar south pole re-mains a mysterious place,but we know it has ice. “Thisrover will help us answer themany questions we haveabout where the water is, andhow much there is for us touse,” said Daniel Andrews,the new mission’s projectmanager. businessinsider.in

It will be investigatingthe Moon’s south pole where themanned mission will land in 2024

Viper mobility testbed, an engineering model created toevaluate the rover’s mobility system

Following two space-craft crashes in thepast, landing on theMoon has proven to bedifficult due to issues incommunications duringthe final stages ofdescent, a phase knownas ‘15 minutes of terror’.

Phot

o: N

ASA/

John

son

Spac

e Ce

nter

Self-driving cars can lead tomore traffic congestionS

ELF-DRIVING cars could worsentraffic congestion in the com-ing decades, partly because ofdrivers’ attitudes to the emerg-

ing technology and a lack of willing-ness to share their rides.

For the study published in the jour-nal Urban Policy and Research, a re-search team used Adelaide city in Aus-tralia as a test model and surveyed morethan 500 commuters, including a mix ofthose who travel to work by car and pub-lic transport.

“Autonomous or driverless vehiclesare likely to have profound effects oncities. Being able to understand theirimpact will help to shape how our com-munities respond to the challenges andopportunities ahead,” said the study’sco-author Raul Barreto from the Uni-versity of Adelaide.

Shifting attitude This research investigated commuters’views on autonomous vehicle owner-ship and use, vehicle sharing, andtheir attachment to conventional ve-hicles. The team has also explored po-tential vehicle flow, with a mixof autonomous and conven-tional vehicles.

According to the re-searchers, the key factorsaffecting the transition toautonomous vehicles arecommuter attitudes to carownership and wanting todrive themselves, ratherthan have technology doit for them, and con-sumer attitudes to carsharing.

Peak period congestion

“Our evidence suggeststhat as riders switch toautonomous vehicles,

there will be an adverse impact on pub-lic transport. With most commuters notinterested in ride sharing, this could in-crease peak period vehicle flows, whichis likely to increase traffic congestionover the next 30 years or so,” Barreto

said. “Under both scenarios wetested, the number of vehiclesoverall will eventually drop.However, total vehicle tripsmay increase, and some ofthe predicted benefits of au-tonomous vehicles may noteventuate until a lengthytransition period is com-plete.” IANS

Simply put, a truly driverlesscar must be capable of navi-gating to a destination, avoid-ing obstacles, and parkingwithout any human interven-tion. To accomplish this, a dri-verless car must have anartificial intelligence systemthat senses its surroundingsto avoid collisions.

WHAT IS A SELF-DRIVING CAR?

UNLOCK CLOCK

Unlock Clock helps you con-sider your tech use, bycounting and displaying thenumber of times you unlockyour phone in a day.However, this won’t appearas an app when downloadedfrom Play Store. You canfind it in your LiveWallpaper library.

POST BOXWE FLIP

It acts as a printable paper phonethat helps you take a break

from your digital world

Desert Island helps you find focus,by challenging you to go a day with

only your essential apps. Just pick the apps that aremost important to you, then give it a go for 24 hours.

Spam callers will befined ` 70 lakh percall with new US law,When will India dothe same?

During a busy day or evena lazy one, the last thingyou want to do is an-swer a phone call froman unknown number.

And in case that call is the irritat-ing spam call — it’s the absoluteworst. Mere recording being playedafter receiving the call, how annoy-ing that is! However, looks like thisrobocall issue in the US will soon bea thing of the past.

The US Congress has approved alandmark bill that puts a stop on il-legal robocalls from companies. Thebill will be soon signed by the USPresident in the coming weeks for itto be turned into a law. Under theTelephone Robocall Abuse CriminalEnforcement and Deterrence Act,

short for the TRACED Act, the Fed-eral Communications Commission

could fine robocallers up to $10,000 (` 70 lakhs) per call. The law also asksfor major carriers in the US to installtechnology dubbed STIR/SHAKENwithin their networks to easily tracethe number and let the user know ifits genuine or just a robocaller.

While this is definitely cool thatillegal annoying robocallers wouldno longer be functioning in the US,we can’t wait for a rule like this tocome to India. India does have itsown kind of robocaller blockingthrough the DND initiative whereyou can call your telecom operatorto add you on the DND list, thus fil-tering these annoying calls. How-ever, sometimes this too isn’tenough and robocallers and up con-necting to our phone.

➤ Recently TRAI hasreleased DND 2.0 app onAndroid where users cansign up their numbers tobe put on the DND list.Moreover, they also havethe ability to report a spe-cific spam SMS or call rightthrough the app for thegovt to nail it down.

06 “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathersknowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

Isaac Asimov, writer SCI-TECH