A long-standing rumor suggests that the Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps drain the battery on cellphones that have the apps installed. If you believe former Facebook employee George Hayward, a data scientist, Facebook can secretly drain the battery on its users’ cellphones on purpose. As reported by The New York Post, there is actually a name for what it is that Facebook is doing, It is called “negative testing” and it allows tech companies to secretly run down the batteries on someone’s phone in order to test features on an app or to see how an image might load.
Hayward was fired by Facebook parent Meta for refusing to participate in negative testing. “I said to the manager, ‘This can harm somebody,’ and she said by harming a few we can help the greater masses. Any data scientist worth his or her salt will know, Don’t hurt people,” he told the Post.
Hayward was axed by Meta in November and originally filed a lawsuit against the company in Manhattan Federal Court. The 33-year-old worked for Meta’s Facebook Messenger app which delivers text, phone calls, and video calls between users. In the suit, Hayward’s attorney, Dan Kaiser, pointed out that draining users’ smartphone batteries puts people at risk especially “in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to police or other rescue workers.”
Social media apps like Facebook Messenger can intentionally drain the batteries powering users’ smartphones
The suit had to be withdrawn because Meta’s terms of employment forced Hayward to argue his case in arbitration. Kaiser says that most people have no idea that Facebook and other social media companies can drain your battery intentionally. Commenting on the practice of negative testing, the lawyer added, “It’s clearly illegal. It’s enraging that my phone, that the battery can be manipulated by anyone.”
Originally hired in 2019, Hayward was receiving a six-figure annual paycheck from Meta. But when it came to the company’s request to perform the negative testing, Hayward said, “I refused to do this test. It turns out if you tell your boss, ‘No, that’s illegal,’ it doesn’t go over very well.”
At one point during his employment at Meta, the company handed Hayward an internal training document titled “How to run thoughtful negative tests.” The document included examples of how to run such tests. After reading the document, Hayward said that it appeared to him that Facebook had used negative testing before. He added, “I have never seen a more horrible document in my career.”
Kanye West is ‘suspect in battery investigation’ after allegedly throwing woman’s cellphone during heated exchange en route to kids’ basketball game
The rapper and designer has reportedly been named a suspect in a battery investigation after he allegedly grabbed and threw a woman’s phone
The incident took place while he was on his way to daughter North and son Saint’s basketball game
It appeared that Ye suspected he was being followed by paparazzi — it has not yet been confirmed whether the person was a photographer or a fan
The disgraced star was accompanied by new ‘wife’ Bianca Censori
By Carly Johnson For Dailymail.com
Published: | Updated:
Kanye West has reportedly been named a suspect in a battery investigation after the rapper allegedly snatched a cellphone belonging to a woman and threw it.
According to a social media video, West, 45, was en route to his daughter North and son Saint’s basketball game in LA when the alleged incident occurred.
The rapper, who seemingly suspected he was being followed by paparazzi, is seen exiting his black Mercedes-Benz to allegedly confront the female in her vehicle.
His new ‘wife’ Bianca Censori was seen in the passenger’s seat of his car and did not follow the Grammy Award-winner.
Report: Kanye West has reportedly been named a suspect in a battery investigation after the rapper allegedly snatched a cellphone belonging to a woman and threw it
The woman – who has not been identified as either a fan or photographer – filmed the hitmaker from the driver’s seat as he said: ‘You didn’t have to run up on me like that.
‘If I say stop, stop with your cameras!’ Kanye continued, before the woman suggested she was within her rights to film him because he is a ‘celebrity.’
The response may have angered Kanye as he allegedly grabbed the woman’s cellphone from her hand before tossing it into the air.
It’s unclear as to what led to the confrontation.
TMZ reported that he accused the woman of ‘following him’ and has since been named a suspect in a battery investigation.
According to a social media video , West, 45, was en route to his daughter North and son Saint’s basketball game in LA when the alleged incident occurred
His new ‘wife’ Bianca Censori was seen in the passenger’s seat of his car and did not follow the Grammy Award-winner
The outlet further alleged that Ventura County Sheriff’s Department deputies were called and responded to the incident ‘around 4:30 PM and were provided video evidence of the incident.’
West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian was also present at Friday night’s game as she arrived with sister Khloe Kardashian’s ex Tristan Thompson.
Kanye’s alleged altercation was said to have taken place near the sports facility.
West – who shares North, Saint, as well as daughter Chicago and son Psalm with Kim – shocked fans when it was reported earlier this month that he had married new ‘wife’ Bianca Censori.
His divorce from Kim – whom he was married to for nearly seven years – was finalized in December but the former couple were declared legally single this past March.
The rapper, who seemingly suspected he was being followed by paparazzi, is seen exiting his black Mercedes-Benz to allegedly confront the female in her vehicle
Page Six reported that it wasn’t the only time West asked to be left alone on Friday.
The publication noted that after he returned to his vehicle, he then stopped in front of a group of paparazzi who had been recording the entire ordeal.
‘You want me to be running up on your kids’ games like that?’ the superstar asked a pap, who then replied, ‘There’s a hundred of us.’
Ye then pleaded, ‘Everybody needs to stop when I see my kids. If I need to see my kids, you can’t photograph me. It’s called human rights.’
He was clad in all-black and his car was positioned in front of a gold-toned SUV
The rapper, who seemingly suspected he was being followed by paparazzi, is seen exiting his black Mercedes-Benz to allegedly confront the female in her vehicle
‘If I say stop, stop with your cameras!’ Kanye continued, before the woman suggested she was able to film him since he was a ‘celebrity’
The response may have angered Kanye as he allegedly grabbed the woman’s cellphone from her hand before tossing it into the air
TMZ reported that he accused the woman of ‘following him’ and he has since been named a suspect in a battery investigation
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told The Daily Beast on Tuesday night that the FBI seized his cellphone while he was at a Hardee’s restaurant.
Lindell also posted on social media a grand jury subpoena from a federal prosecutor in Colorado and what appears to be a search warrant related to a federal investigation into breached voting machines in Mesa County, Colorado.
The warrant requests “all records and information on the LINDELL CELLPHONE that constitute fruits, evidence, or instrumentalities of violations” relating to identity theft, intentional damage to a protected computer, and conspiracy to commit the previous two crimes. The warrant cites violations “involving Tina Peters, Conan James Hayes, Belinda Knisley, Sandra Brown, Sherronna Bishop, Michael Lindell, and/or Douglas Frank, among other co-conspirators known and unknown to the government.”
The Denver FBI field office told The Daily Beast that it does not comment on individual cases but, “without commenting on this specific matter, I can confirm that the FBI was at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Colorado, which issued the subpoena, declined to comment.
The case appears to stem from a 2021 breach of voting machines in Mesa County, allegedly by the county’s clerk Tina Peters and her associates. Peters is facing state felony charges in the alleged breach, alongside her former clerk’s office colleagues Belinda Knisley and Sandra Brown. Hayes, a professional surfer turned conspiracy theorist, is accused of impersonating a local tech worker to help breach the machines under Peters’ direction.
In November, the home of Sheronna Bishop, an acquaintance of Lindell and Peters and a former campaign manager for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), was believed to be the subject of a search warrant related to the Mesa County breach.
Now the investigation appears to include Lindell.
The search warrant requests data from Lindell’s phone, including any information it contains about damage to Dominion voting machines, information about Hayes’ alleged impersonation of a tech worker, and the phone’s internet activity, geographical location, and information on whether it could be controlled remotely via “viruses, Trojan horses, and other forms of malicious software.”
“They took my phone,” Lindell told The Daily Beast on Tuesday evening via phone. “The FBI did!”
Lindell claimed the FBI was looking for information on fellow election fraud conspiracy theorist Dennis Montgomery.
“They are looking for the terabytes from Dennis Montgomery,” Lindell further told The Daily Beast. “I hope they lift the gag order.”
Lindell also expounded on his legal situation in a Tuesday night video.
“The FBI came after me and took my phone,” he said on Facebook. “They surrounded me in a Hardee’s and took my phone that I run all my business, everything with. What they’ve done is weaponize—the FBI, it’s disgusting. I don’t have a computer. Everything I do [is] off that phone. Everything was on there. And they told me not to tell anybody. Here’s an order: ‘Don’t tell anybody!’ ‘OK, I won’t!’ Well, I am.”
“Absolutely unnecessary,” pillow tycoon sidekick and Lindell TV host Brannon Howse added when reached by The Daily Beast.
Lindell also showed a copy of a subpoena, dated Sept. 7 and signed by an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado.
“An official criminal investigation of a suspected felony is being conducted by an agency of the United States and a Federal Grand Jury in the District of Colorado,” a document that Lindell said was a subpoena on his nightly show said. “As a subpoena recipient, you are not under an obligation of secrecy. However, we request that you not disclose the existence of this subpoena for an indefinite period of time.”
Lindell has previously been linked to multiple ongoing investigations in the state, most related to Peters. Shortly after allegedly breaching her own county’s voting machines and leaking the data to conspiracy theorists, Peters attended Lindell’s August 2021 “Cyber Symposium” on supposed voter fraud, after which she went into hiding in a series of Lindell’s “safe houses.” In April, following Peters’ arrest, Lindell told The Daily Beast that investigators had not approached him about the breach.
Peters is facing state-level charges, whereas Lindell’s subpoena originates from a federal grand jury.
Lindell has repeatedly claimed to have given Peters significant gifts, including a flight to the Cyber Symposium on his private jet, as well as campaign contributions up to $800,000, which exceed Colorado’s limit of $65 for gifts to public officials.
Peters’ campaign contributions are under investigation, the state’s Independent Ethics Commission confirmed earlier this year, although it did not comment on whether Lindell’s contributions were part of that investigation.
Lindell is also tangentially linked to a similar breach of election equipment in Elbert County, Colorado, where a second clerk claims to have made unauthorized copies of voting machines, with assistance from two men who have promoted election fraud conspiracy theories on Lindell’s web show. One of the men describes his activist group, Cause of America, as being funded by Lindell.
Missing California teenager Kiely Rodni was wearing an “Odd Future” sweatshirt at a campground party the night she vanished — as authorities revealed her cellphone last pinged near a lake.
The 16-year-old has been missing for more than a week after she was last seen at an end-of-school party near Prosser Family Campground in Truckee, just north of Lake Tahoe, in the early hours of Aug. 6.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday it’s found footage of Rodni early on at the party wearing a pink and white sweatshirt with “Odd Future” — the name of a hip-hop band — emblazoned across it.
It wasn’t clear if Rodni was still wearing the sweatshirt when she went missing, the sheriff’s office said.
Kiely Rodni has been missing since Aug. 6, when she was last seen at a party near Prosser Family Campground in Truckee, California.Placer County SheriffThe Placer County Sheriff’s Office said video from the party showed the 16-year-old wearing this “Odd Future” sweatshirt early on.Facebook/Placer County Sheriff’s
Authorities revealed last week that Rodni had also borrowed another hoodie at the party — with the Lana Del Ray lyrics, “You don’t want to be forgotten, you just want to disappear” scrawled across it.
As the frantic search for the teen entered its second week, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office, which is assisting in the search, said Rodni’s cellphone last pinged at about 12.30 a.m. Aug 6. near Prosser Lake — a manmade reservoir that surrounds the campground.
“The ping for the data points was near the water. It’s hard to tell an exact pinpoint,” Capt. Sam Brown said at a press conference Saturday.
“Just because it was last pinged there, that doesn’t mean that’s where the phone stopped pinging,” Brown continued. “There’s lots of reasons why those notifications or data points could be lost.”
Rodni’s mom, Lindsey Rodni-Nieman, had revealed last week that her daughter sent her a text late on Aug. 5 saying she was leaving the party in 45 minutes and was coming “straight home.”
Search crews have been scouring the lake for days as part of the widespread search for the missing teen.
Brown said the deepest part of the lake is about 57 feet and visibility is low, adding that search crews are almost going “into the water blind.”
“Once you start maneuvering the ground, it’s like going through mud. These are tough operations,” he said.
The teen has been missing for more than a week and authorities are conducting widespread searches for her. APAuthorities are still searching for Rodni’s car — a silver 2013 Honda CRV — which has also been missing since the party. Placer County Sheriff
Rodni was last seen at the campground between 12.30 a.m. and 1 a.m., according to authorities.
They are treating her disappearance as a potential abduction because the car she was driving — a silver 2013 Honda CRV — hasn’t been found.
Her cellphone has also been out of service since the party.
Authorities have so far received more than 1,200 tips in the case, including one lead that turned into a dead end over the weekend.
Crews spent Saturday digging at a “burial site” based on one tip, but only ended up discovering the remains of a dog.
“It was located by a search-and-rescue ground team,” Placer County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Angela Musallam said of the burial site. “Kiely’s family was notified of the potential development.”
“The FBI responded to secure the scene yesterday and was accompanied by the Placer and Nevada county sheriff’s offices. The FBI agents investigated the site through early this morning and recovered the remains of a dog,” she added.
GLENDALE, Calif. (KABC) — A Glendale “public safety alert” that was sent to cellphones and other mobile devices across Los Angeles and Ventura counties on Saturday morning was part of a drill, officials said.
The notification, which was sent shortly after 9 a.m., urged residents of Chevy Chase Canyon to “safely evacuate your home and proceed to the evacuation site” at Glendale Community College.
Minutes later, the city of Glendale tweeted: “THIS IS A DRILL: #MyGlendale is conducting an evacuation exercise in Chevy Chase Canyon.”
Many people who were unnerved by the alert took to social media — at first to express their alarm, followed by bemusement or annoyance.
“Everyone in LA googling where Chevy Chase Canyon is right now,” Marissa Monticolo tweeted.
“How stupid!” Diana Abraham said on Facebook. “Must have scared the people in that area unbelievably.”
About 30 minutes after the first notification, a follow-up was sent out that read: “Disregard evacuation message for Chevy Chase Canyon. Training exercise only.”
DEVELOPING: More details will be added to this report as they become available.
THIS IS A DRILL: #MyGlendale is conducting an evacuation exercise in Chevy Chase Canyon. For those who live in the Chevy Chase Canyon: Safely evacuate your home and proceed to the evacuation site located at the Glendale Community College Parking Lot B: https://t.co/zjTZ6CMN6E
Alec Baldwin turned his cellphone over to Long Island police Friday — nearly a month after authorities secured a warrant for the device following a fatal shooting on the set of the movie “Rust,” according to officials.
The 63-year-old actor surrendered his phone — which is believed to contain information about the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October — to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office Friday morning, a spokesman for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office told The Post.
“They will conduct the extraction of the data, and then hand the phone over to us,” said Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Juan Rios.
But not everything on the star’s phone will be up for grabs during the probe, Rios said.
“There will be some exempt information that’s not considered pertinent to the investigation, such as attorney-client privilege material, communications between Mr. Baldwin and his attorney as well as spousal privileged information.”
The handover comes one day after the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release, “to date, the cell phone has not been turned over to authorities.”
Police in New Mexico got a warrant for the cellphone on Dec. 16 and the case’s lead detective quickly notified Baldwin’s attorney, police said.
But Baldwin failed to turn it over for weeks, forcing Santa Fe authorities to team up with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office on Long Island last week to get it.
On Jan. 8, the actor posted an Instagram video claiming he simply wanted his private communications protected.
“Any suggestion that I am not complying with requests or orders, or search warrants about my phone, that’s bulls—. That’s a lie,” Baldwin said in the video.
On Jan. 8, the actor posted an Instagram video claiming he simply wanted his private communications protected.
Halyna Hutchins was shot on the set of the “Rust” on Oct. 21, 2021.AP / Jae C. Hong
“Any suggestion that I am not complying with requests or orders, or search warrants about my phone, that’s bulls—. That’s a lie,” Baldwin said in the video.
“It’s a process that takes time. They have to specify what exactly they want. They just can’t go through your phone and take, you know, your photos or your love letters to your wife or whatever,” Baldwin said. “But, of course, we are 1,000 percent going to comply with all that. We’re, you know, perfectly fine with that.”
The “30 Rock” actor added that he and his lawyer attorney were following a process when authorities request evidence from a subject who lives out of state.
Baldwin shot Hutchins with a prop gun on the set of Western flick on Oct. 21, and later said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos he didn’t pull the trigger.
Investigators also want to seize texts, photos, videos, emails and internet browser histories from the star’s phone, according to the warrant.
New Mexico wants to search his phone for information on the “Rust” shooting.
December 17, 2021, 5:40 AM
• 5 min read
Authorities in New Mexico have issued a search warrant for actor Alec Baldwin’s cellphone as they probe the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust.”
The cellphone is believed to be in the actor’s possession, according to the warrant, and authorities want to look at text messages sent from the presumed iPhone by Baldwin.
“We are confident that the evidence will show that Mr. Baldwin is not responsible civilly or criminally for what occurred on October 21, and he continues to cooperate with authorities,” Aaron Dyer. Baldwin’s civil attorney, said in a statement Thursday night. “We proactively requested that the authorities obtain a warrant so that we could take steps to protect Mr. Baldwin’s family and personal information that is clearly unrelated to the investigation.”
“A phone contains a person’s entire life, and personal information needs to be protected. While they evaluate the phone information, we hope that the authorities continue to focus on how the live rounds got on the set in the first place,” continued Dyer in the statement.
Investigators are also seeking to seize photos and videos, emails, internet browser histories, GPS data and more, according to the warrant.
Santa Fe County is investigating the shooting. No charges have been filed, though none have been ruled out, either.
Judge David A. Segura approved the search warrant on Thursday afternoon.
In her affidavit, Detective Alexandra Hancock said she asked Baldwin and his attorney for the phone and was “instructed to acquire a warrant.”
A search of Hutchins’ phone found conversations about the production dating back to July 14, according to the affidavit.
Hancock said she believes there may be information on the phone “material and relevant to this investigation,” and that gathering information prior to the film’s production “is essential for a full investigation,” the affidavit stated.
Baldwin shot Hutchins on Oct. 21 during a dress rehearsal for the Western, which he was producing and starring in. The movie was directed by Joel Souza, who was also injured in the shooting.
Baldwin thought he was handling a “cold gun” — one without ammunition — on set when it apparently went off, with a live bullet striking Hutchins.
“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” Baldwin told ABC News earlier this month. “Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”
Baldwin downplayed the possibility of any criminal charges during the interview.
“I’ve been told by people who are in the know, in terms of even inside the state, that it’s highly unlikely that I would be charged with anything criminally,” he said.
Last month, investigators searched an Albuquerque prop house as a potential source of the live ammunition found on the set, according to the search warrant affidavit. The owner of the prop house has denied providing live ammunition to the production.
ABC News’ Matt Fuhrman and Jen Watts contributed to this report.
After tornadoes killed six workers at an Amazon distribution center in Edwardsville, Illinois, some Amazon workers have raised concerns about how the company handles emergency responses and about cellphone policies it plans to reintroduce next year, which workers have described as draconian.
Workers at two neighboring Amazon facilities in Edwardsville, just outside St. Louis, who were also in the path of the tornadoes overnight Friday said they have had little training in preparing for tornadoes and bristled at a company policy that multiple sources have said the company is trying to bring back Jan. 1, which would ban workers from having cellphones at work.
Two employees who work at nearby facilities said they had been given very little tornado-specific training and were expected to work through tornado warnings.
“We have never had any tornado drills, nor had we sheltered in place for any of the warnings we’ve had in the past,” said a woman who has worked for the past two years at STL8, another Amazon facility about 66 miles west of Edwardsville, and is not authorized to speak publicly. She added that during two previous tornado warnings during her overnight shift, she was expected to continue working even when the company sounded alarms.
But Alisa Carroll, a company spokeswoman, said “emergency response training is provided to new employees and that training is reinforced throughout the year.”
Workers across Amazon facilities also pushed back against a policy that Amazon is bringing back barring phones at work. For years, Amazon has banned workers from carrying their phones in warehouse facilities. The company relaxed the policy during the coronavirus pandemic and then started to reinstate it at warehouses across the country, Bloomberg reported.
Asked about Bloomberg’s reporting and an understanding among workers that the ban would be reinstated Jan. 1, Carroll declined to answer directly.
“Employees and drivers are allowed to have their cell phones with them,” she said by email.
A second worker, who also was not authorized to speak publicly and who works at STL4, the building diagonally across the street from the damaged facility, said in a written message that one of her closest co-workers was grateful that she had a phone with her. If she had not had her phone, she would not have known to run to shelter.
“We live in the midwest. Tornado watches and warnings happen ALL THE TIME. Most days we barely bat an eye at storm watches, and we are accustomed to taking shelter in a moment’s notice at warnings,” she wrote. “But you can’t take shelter if you don’t get the warning.”
Workers said having phones with them was a lifeline overnight Friday. Rob Elmore, 38, a seasonal process assistant at the facility diagonally across the street from the center that was hit by the tornado, said he was able to stay in touch with his family through the tornadoes.
I was getting text messages left and right from family members, said Elmore, who has worked at Amazon for over a year.
Digging deeper
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement “We’re deeply saddened by the news that members of our Amazon family passed away as a result of the storm in Edwardsville, IL. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their loved ones, and everyone impacted by the tornado. We also want to thank all the first responders for their ongoing efforts on scene. We’re continuing to provide support to our employees and partners in the area.”
John Felton, Amazon’s senior vice president of global delivery services, also said at a news conference Monday that “all procedures were followed correctly.”
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, said Monday that it had opened an investigation into the collapse of the DLI4 building in Edwardsville where the six workers died.
Safety personnel and first responders survey the damaged Amazon distribution center Saturday in Edwardsville, Ill.Michael B. Thomas / Getty Images
“OSHA has had compliance officers at the complex since Saturday, December 11 to provide assistance,” wrote Scott Allen, the regional director of public affairs for the Labor Department. “OSHA has six months to complete its investigation, issue citations and propose monetary penalties if violations of workplace safety and or health regulations are found.”
Carroll said in a statement that “OSHA investigates all workplace fatalities and we are supporting them.”
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at the news conference Monday that local officials have started “to determine if there were any structural issues” at the distribution center. He said his administration has asked Amazon whether it followed best practices in terms of safety procedures at the warehouse.
The collapse has only stirred the anger of Amazon workers across the country who have been trying to unionize. Chris Smalls, a former Amazon employee who leads the Amazon Labor Union, an independent effort to organize warehouse staff members, said in a statement that the collapse shows that workers need a labor union.
“The needless deaths were a reminder of Amazon keeping shifts going during other disasters, such as at the Staten Island facility during Hurricane Ida,” he said.
UPDATE: This article has been updated to include additional responses from Amazon.
There wouldn’t be Uber or Lyft or Google Maps or FaceTime or Instagram or Tinder or Snapchat or TikTok or iPhones or Android phones if someone hadn’t invented the cellphone. Fortunately, somebody did.
It was Marty Cooper. “I know a lot about the future, ’cause I spend all my time there,” he laughed, “when I should be thinking about practical things of today.”
Cooper’s memoir, “Cutting the Cord” (Rosetta Books), tells the story. He is a Chicago native, Navy submarine officer, and, eventually, an executive at Motorola, maker of police and military radios – and in the early 1970s the two-way radio known as the car phone.
Those early car phones were not cellular telephones: “They had one transmitter in a city, and a very limited amount of radio channels,” Cooper told correspondent David Pogue. “The chances were one in 20 that you could make a phone call, that’s how bad that service was.”
In 1972, the idea of a cellular network was catching on, in which cities would be divided into smaller land regions (called cells), each with a transmission tower. As you moved from cell to cell, your call would be handed off from one tower to another.
AT&T, Motorola’s much bigger rival, asked the FCC for a monopoly on cellular communications, not because it had a vision of phones in our pockets, but to expand its car phone business.
Cooper said, “They were gonna take over our business as well as this whole new thing, and do it wrong! People had been wired to their desks and their kitchens for over 100 years, and now they’re gonna wire us to our cars, where we spend five percent of our time.”
Motorola wanted to prove that opening up the airwaves to competition would spur more innovation.
“So I thought about, ‘How could we do a dazzling demonstration? The only way to do it is to have a working … something,'” Cooper said.
Cooper’s team began with the design, not the technology: “Small enough to put in your pocket, big enough so that it could go between your ears and your mouth,” he explained.
He showed Pogue a model of the early design. “This isn’t a miniature – this is what they actually had in mind? It’s a tenth the size of the final one,” Pogue marveled.
Marty Cooper shows correspondent David Pogue the prototype design for the first cellphone.
CBS News
By the time Motorola had added the battery and all the circuitry, it grew to this size:
An early design of the Motorola DynaTAC phone, which was introduced in 1983.
Motorola
In only three months, Marty Cooper had overseen the construction of a working cellphone. Cooper named it the DynaTAC. “You could talk for 25 minutes before the phone ran down,” he said.
On April 3, 1973, Cooper made the world’s first public cellphone call, as a demonstration for a reporter.
“So, we met this guy on Sixth Avenue in New York, in front of the Hilton,” he recalled. “And then I had to make a phone call to demonstrate it.”
And whom did he call? Joel Engel, his archrival over at AT&T. “And I said, ‘Joel, I’m calling you on a cellphone, but a real cellphone, a personal, handheld portable cellphone.’ Silence on the other end of the line.”
Cellphone inventor Marty Cooper on making his first public call:
Cell phone inventor Marty Cooper on making his first public call by
CBS Sunday Morning on
YouTube
Cooper’s gambit worked. The FCC was so impressed that it opened the cellular industry to competition.
Cooper left Motorola in 1983; since then, he and his wife Arlene Harris, a tech inventor in her own right, have started a series of companies in the cellular industry.
Pogue asked, “Isn’t the general advice for relationships not to work with your spouse?”
“We don’t agree about everything,” Cooper said. “But you know, that’s the spice of life, is disagreement – as long as it’s friendly.”
Pogue asked Cooper, “But it seems like, if there’s a technological dispute, can’t you just go, ‘I’ll have you know I’m the father of the cellphone!’ Wouldn’t you automatically win?”
Harris deadpanned, “No.”
The cellphone has come a long way, but Cooper thinks that we’ve only begun to tap its potential: “We are only at the very, very beginning. We are going to revolutionize mankind in many ways. I believe that the whole process of education is going to be revolutionized. And the other revolutions that are gonna happen is in health care. I know I sound like an optimist, but poverty is going to be a thing of the past.”
Rosetta Books
Already, Cooper said, workers in poorer countries use their cellphones to move money around without needing a bank. “This has stimulated entrepreneurism. People’s lives are being saved. People are being moved out of poverty.”
Cooper is a notorious fitness buff. At 92, he lifts weights and takes walks, sometimes on the beach in front of his home. But he considers mental exercise even more important.
“If you don’t keep learning all your life – keep an open mind, soak up stuff, be curious – you lose the ability to learn,” he said. “And to me, that’s the scariest thing of all.”
As for his new book, well, Hollywood has already bought the film rights. Pogue asked, “Who’s gonna play you in the movie?”
“I was hoping that you would do it, David,” he laughed. “You’re the only star that I know.”
“Have your people talk to my people,” Pogue said. “Here’s what I find strange, Marty: I know this is a stereotype, but as a 92-year-old guy, I might expect you to relish the stories from the past more than the stories of the future.”
“Well, I have observed that things in the past have continued to improve, you know?’ Cooper replied. “People are richer today. They are healthier today. We’ve still got a lot of problems, but there’s no reason to think that we aren’t gonna keep improving.”
For more info:
Story produced by Michelle Kessel. Editor: Emanuele Secci.
A massive trove of hacked data from more than 500 million Facebook users was made easily accessible Saturday — including Mark Zuckerberg’s cellphone number, according to one security expert.
The information was initially stolen in January, after hackers exploited a vulnerability related to phone numbers associated with Facebook accounts, ultimately creating a massive database of private data.
On Saturday, the database became readily accessible to those with basic data skills after it was posted to a hacker forum, according to Bloomberg.
Facebook dismissed the data as “very old” but security expert Dave Walker pointed out the company’s own CEO was victimized in the hack.
“Regarding the #FacebookLeak, of the 533M people in the leak – the irony is that Mark Zuckerberg is regrettably included in the leak as well. If journalists are struggling to get a statement from @facebook, maybe just give him a call, from the tel in the leak?” he tweeted alongside a screenshot of Zuckerberg’s name and information with the phone number partially blacked out.
