Leo Mirani

It’s a term owners of electric cars know all too well: “range anxiety,” or the fear of running out of juice before finding a plug point. Just ask the Norwegians, who are the world’s biggest electric-car enthusiasts on a per capita basis. A list words of the year (link in Norwegian) produced by Norway’s Language Council in 2013, includes “rekkeviddeangst”—yes, that’s “range anxiety” in Norwegian. Even the newly inaugurated Formula E championship for electric race cars requires the use of two vehicles per driver, for precisely this reason.

“We are concerned about the disintermediation of search by apps and this could impact core search growth. While this is extremely difficult to quantify, qualitatively, we believe that consumers’ increased dependence on mobile and apps is negatively impacting GOOG’s core search.” So begins Macquarie’s “bottom line for 2015” for Google.

For mobile operators, setting up shop in some of the remotest places on earth can bring rich rewards, but also tremendous risk. Sometimes the risk is too much—Digicel founder Denis O’Brien said his company lost nine people in “plane crashes, accidents, car crashes” when it was building its network in Papua New Guinea—and as often, the reward is too little. As a result, 10% of the world’s population lives in places without mobile coverage (pdf).

This many, in India. Fully paid up. Without a contract. All for $170.

In the first few days of 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the world to the future of mobile: the smartphone. A computer and phone rolled into one, the iPhone came with revolutionary features for the time, including a 3.5-inch screen that reacted to touch, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a 2-megapixel camera. It cost $500 without a contract.

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Of the many attractions offered by my hometown, a west coast peninsula famed for its deep natural harbor, perhaps the most striking is that you never have to leave the house. With nothing more technologically advanced than a phone, you can arrange to have delivered to your doorstep, often in less than an hour, takeaway food, your weekly groceries, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs (over-the-counter, prescription, proscribed), books, newspapers, a dozen eggs, half a dozen eggs, a single egg. I once had a single bottle of Coke sent to my home at the same price I would have paid had I gone to shop myself.

This post has been updated.

The knives are out in Europe.

There’s too much money in Nairobi.

Apple released its list (iTunes link) of the most popular apps of 2014 earlier this week. While much of the news revolved around Apple’s “curated” list of what it considers the highest-quality apps of the year, there is more insight to be gleaned from the “top grossing” list, or the apps that made the most money. Nine of out the top 10 are games.

It’s easy to confuse Tio for T10. Tio means “ten” in Swedish (for the number of keys on its keyboard), but it could just as well be T10, the sequel to the much-loved T9 dictionary that simplified texting on older, unsmart phones.

Just this week, the world’s most famous living physicist, Stephen Hawking, laid out his worries about artificial intelligence: ”The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” he told the BBC. In October, Elon Musk delivered much the same message, warning that “we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that.”

Three years ago, entrepreneur Vladislav Martynov got a call from a friend in Russia, suggesting that the two embark on a project to build a smartphone company. Martynov, then based in Canada and actively investing in startups after stints at Microsoft in Seattle and at a firm in Denmark, agreed—but knew they would have to create something truly different.

Ten days ago, on Nov. 24, online security firms revealed the existence of a powerful computer virus called Regin. A tool of espionage (pdf), the bug displayed all the hallmarks of nation-state backing, researchers said. Suspicion immediately fell on the US and Israel.

“Video is a very big priority,” Mark Zuckerberg told investors during the third-quarter earnings call this year. Because that’s where the money is.

In September, Google launched its first batch of “Android One” smartphones aimed at customers in emerging markets. Priced at just a little over $100 (despite earlier assurances they would cost no more than $100), the devices were meant to bring some order to the chaos of cheap Android phones. Over the past two months however, reports suggest that all is not going according to plan.

Uber may be reeling from bad press in the United States, its biggest market, but this morning it made the front pages of newspapers in India, one of its fastest-growing markets outside the US, for a different reason.

For about one hour today, web users noticed two odd things on most major news sites. First, the pages loaded faster. Second, there were no ads.

In the past year, it has become increasingly clear just how public our private communications are. Edward Snowden exposed the extent of government snooping in western democracies, large retail firms have been repeatedly subject to security breaches—with millions of individuals’ personal details leaked each time—and journalists have been energetically revealing the reach of corporate surveillance for advertising and marketing purposes.

Chinese shoppers are celebrating the online shopping extravaganza Singles Day, and by 1:30pm local time, they had spent nearly $6 billion on Alibaba, the country’s biggest e-commerce site. Last year it took them the full day to cough up that much cash. It is a sign of just how quickly China’s e-commerce market is growing.

“CEOs, senior vice presidents, sales and marketing directors and top R&D staff.” These are the people who have been targeted by Darkhotel, a sophisticated security threat, as they check into hotels around the world, according to a new report (pdf) by Kaspersky Labs, an online security firm. The vast majority of infections occurred in Japan, followed by Taiwan, China, Russia, South Korea, and other Asian nations. Germany and the US also figure on the list.

Copyright law gets a bad reputation for being heavyhanded—and deservedly so.

The Catholic Church imposes the penalty of excommunication only in the rarest of circumstances. Simply leaving the church does not attract such ire.