The iPhone 14’s new Crash Detection feature, which is supposed to alert authorities when it detects you’ve been in a car accident, has an unexpected side effect: it dials 911 on rollercoasters. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the feature has had law enforcement sent to amusement parks on numerous occasions after mistaking a thrill ride’s twists, turns, and hard braking for a real emergency.
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Bringing smartphones on rides isn’t really a smart idea to begin with, but the risk of false 911 calls might be all the more reason to leave the iPhone 14 (and other devices) behind before getting in that bumper car. Otherwise, you can opt to put your phone on airplane mode or just disable the feature altogether.
The fantasy began to consume me at the turn of the millennium.
I’d always felt like a half-being, a cyborg of incompatible substances: gringa daughter of a Puerto Rican MD and a long-unemployed Mexican man with addiction issues. Native or alien. Nerd or rebel. I was white and not white but thought I had to choose.
No wonder, then, that the greatest ambition of my youth was to achieve digital immortality, or uploading my mind to the metaverse. Goodbye, flawed body. Hello, god-self.
The vast, cavernous spaces of the two turbine halls are now filled with restaurants and shops, including Ralph Lauren, Mulberry and Reiss, as well as Uniqlo, Mango, Superdry and Swatch. A floor above Levi’s, the former control room B has been turned into a slick bar, which has the original stainless-steel control panels and switch dials for managing the flow of electricity.
Apple will relocate more than 1,500 employees from offices around London to its new UK base inside the boiler house, across six floors. Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, who had a private tour of the building recently, said: “Once a source of energy for much of London, the transformation this building has undergone honours London’s past and celebrates its future. We’re so glad to be a part of it.”
I am probably too old for roller coasters nowadays, but I have been on quite a few roller coasters back in the days. Of course, then, I didn't have to debate whether to bring my mobile phone along for the ride... because I didn't have any mobile phones. Nor did I have any pagers either.
Then, the next phase of roller coasters riding was with my young daughter. As you can imagine, it wasn't really hard-core rides. The most 'exciting' one was probably Space Mountain in Hong Kong Disneyland. I did bring my mobile phone along in my pants' pockets, and I don't remember having to think twice about it. And, of course, the mobile phones then were not calling emergency services no matter what happened. (No, no mobile phones ever dropped out of my pockets.)
Now, I can imagine theme parks reminding riders to please turn off car-crash mode. In fact, I can see this as a marketing slogan: Our rides are so exciting that your iPhones will be calling for help!
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Thanks for reading.