Garlic, pineapple, pomegranates - the definitive guide to peeling 11 of the trickiest foods

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This article titled “Garlic, pineapple, pomegranates – the definitive guide to peeling 11 of the trickiest foods” was written by Dale Berning Sawa, for The Guardian on Thursday 4th July 2019 07.00 UTC

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When the Toronto foodie Valentina Bachkarova-Lord recently posted a video of her favourite way to peel a head of garlic, Twitter went crazy. “ALL THIS TIME??” was the viral reaction, as in: “We’ve been doing it wrong all this time?” Just months before, there was a similar furore over a pineapple-peeling hack in which two manicured hands literally pulled apart a pineapple; no slicing or dicing, no juice, no mess. It would appear that – right up there with grumpy cats and happy dogs – peeling produce “the right way” is a surefire means of grabbing the world’s attention.

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The garlic and pineapple videos have now racked up tens of millions of views (23.8m and 13.4m, respectively). Of course, it is entirely possible that this owes less to culinary curiosity than to our phone addiction. As the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner put it, the videos hit “all the same tension-and-release dopamine levers as (uggghhh) pimple-popping videos”. But that didn’t stop her from stubbornly trying – and failing – to peel a bulb the way the woman in the garlic video did. In fact, it landed her in the emergency room, getting five stitches in her middle finger. So, perhaps Bachkarova-Lord’s method isn’t the right way?

Beyond garlic and pineapple, there are hacks for peeling avocados, eggs, ginger, mangoes, onions, oranges, pistachios, pomegranates and potatoes. (Also kiwis: the peeling trick being that you don’t need to peel a kiwi, just eat it whole, like an apple. Bonkers.) But do they actually work? I put 11 to the test.

Squeezing out a hard-boiled egg. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Eggs

Add a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to your boiling water (to increase the alkalinity and make the egg easier to peel). When cooked, run the egg under cold water until just cool enough to handle, then crack at either end to make holes. Now you have two options: if you’re up for a challenge, hold the big end up to your mouth with one hand, and blow hard to catch the egg with your other hand as it flies out of the small end. Or else, squeeze lightly until it plops out. Both work.

 

Using one pistachio shell to open another. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Pistachio

Instead of shredding your fingertips and breaking your nails trying to pull open nuts that have barely split, use an empty pistachio shell. It is thin enough to slide into any gap, however slim, and hard enough for you to be able to lever it and prise the closed nut open. A revelation.

 

Using a spoon to get into the knobbly bits of ginger. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Ginger

Many a food blogger’s favourite hack: you use the edge of a teaspoon to just scrape the skin off. The spoon gets into all the folds and creases a knife just can’t deal with, meaning you can use the whole root, knobbly bits included. And it is so easy.

 

Slice vertically, then horizontally, for cubes of onion. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Onion

Not a hack so much as proper chef’s training. Slice the bulb vertically straight down the middle, through the root. Peel the papery outer layers off one half, then lay it flat-side down on your board and, holding firmly by the root, slice from the pointy end to just above the root, keeping the latter intact. Slice again at right angles to these cuts to obtain a pile of perfectly diced onion.

 

With anything other than a snack pineapple, it has to be the knife. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Pineapple

The viral video shows someone pulling the fruit apart, segment by easy segment, like you might a cinnamon bun traybake. However, as countless failed attempts to replicate it prove, this only works if you have what’s called a “snack pineapple”, and not the whoppers from Costa Rica sold at Sainsburys and my local street market. Even rolling one of these firmly across your work surface a couple times to loosen the fibres, and scoring it in places before attempting to pull it apart, only results in all the juice on the floor and a mound of unappetising fibres. Nah. Use a knife.

 

Run a dessert spoon between the flesh and skin of your avocado. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Avocado

Slice in half, then whack the stone head-on with the sharp edge of a big knife and twist and pull the knife out to remove the stone. Then run a dessert spoon between the flesh and skin of each half, to remove intact before slicing thinly. Smoothly does it. Just be careful you don’t end up in hospital.

 

Score your spuds to help them out of their jackets. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Potato

Score a raw spud around its waist in a very light, continuous line, then boil until tender. Once cooked, you’ll see the peel pulling back from the cut, ready for you to slide off in a single movement.

 

Score your pomegranate following its white membranes. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Pomegranate

By far the most aesthetically pleasing of these culinary hacks. Cut around the calyx – that spiky protrusion on one end – until you can pull it out. You should now see the seeds grouped into segments divided by white membranes. Score the skin of the pomegranate on the outside, from top to bottom, following those membranes. The fruit will then fall open like a flower.

 

Unless you need lots of garlic, avoid the hack and use the flat of a knife. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Garlic

The Bachkarova-Lord way – which involves holding a bulb root-side-up, sticking a paring knife into clove after clove and, with a small amount of pressure, twisting them out of their papery sheaths – doesn’t work for me, until I find the YouTube channel Glen & Friends Cooking’s explanation. The trick is to first score the unpeeled head, all around the base of the cloves, where they meet the root. Once you have done that, twisting them out, one by one, with your knife is a doddle. But it is only worth doing if you need a heck of a lot of garlic. For a clove or two, pressing with the flat of your knife is perfectly acceptable.

 

Use a glass to separate mango flesh from skin. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Mango

Another revelation. Stand your fruit on its end and rotate it so you can slice straight down on either side of the pip to remove it. Hold one of the halves, skin side down, in your palm and work a glass between the flesh and skin from one end all the way to the other. You end up with a satisfyingly solid piece of mango in your glass and a pip you can still suck on, because – let’s face it – that is part of the fun.

 

Three cuts and you can make a concertina orange. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Orange

Slice off both ends of your orange, then set it on one flat end and cut it vertically, from top to bottom into the centre. Then, simply unroll into a flat array of ready-parted segments.

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Paddler’s paradise: Poland's lakeland

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This article titled “Paddler’s paradise: Poland’s lakeland” was written by Dixe Wills, for The Guardian on Tuesday 2nd July 2019 05.30 UTC

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We lifted our paddles from the water and let ourselves drift downstream. Deep in a wood, far from anywhere that was anywhere, unseen birds above burst into song in the canopy of spring-leafed trees. Up ahead, sunlight illuminated our way through a tunnel of greens and browns, melting as it touched the water. Emerald lettuce-like plants, blurred out of focus by the current, waved us on our way from below. The air flashed with bursts of blue as little squadrons of damselflies danced around us, heedless of the more cautious flight paths of dragonflies mating on the wing.

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Poland map

It’s fair to say that my companion and I were enchanted. It was as if the entrance to this long, narrow and thrillingly shallow rivulet – for which we’d had to scour a seemingly unbroken bed of reeds at the end of a lake – was a portal into a lost world.

Until this year I’d never heard of the Great Masurian Lakes, and didn’t know that Poland was home to many. However, to the east of Gdánsk, the province of Warmia-Masuria is known unofficially as the Land of a Thousand Lakes. “But that number’s not really right,” local guide Mariana told me. “There are more like 3,000 here.”

A room at the Tiffi Boutique Hotel Photograph: PR

I’d reached the region’s capital, Olsztyn, with an Interrail ticket that had whisked me overnight from London via Berlin, giving me a sneak preview of the landscape through the train window. Unlike England’s Lake District, the scenery here is very flat – not quite the ironing-board flatness of the Fens but certainly a landscape that does not like to hem in its inhabitants. Deciduous woods are dotted with villages, hamlets and farmsteads; storks nest on the top of poles and grand, high-gabled manor houses. Pretty much everything else is water.

I spent a sultry day getting to know one of the north-eastern lakes – Mamry – by doing the gentle, 30-mile cycle tour around it, starting at the town of Węgorzewo. It’s one of 30 routes described in an excellent English-language guide (with maps) available free at tourist information centres. But before picking up my rental bike (£5 a day, wegorzewianka.pl) I popped into the neighbouring Ethnographic Park and Folk Culture Museum.

 

An observation tower from the second world war used by the German army in Mamerki. Photograph: Mariusz Switulski/Alamy

At the park, under the guidance of an expert weaver, I tried my hand at making a traditional rag rug on a handloom. My technique was a trifle ham-fisted, but watching the rug grow was rather satisfying.

Across the road at the museum, a wonderful confection in polished wood and glass was my favourite exhibit. “That,” declared the guide proudly, “is Węgorzewo’s first ever television. A local family won it in a competition in the late 1960s and had to go to Warsaw to pick it up. It would have been worth two to three months’ wages then.”

Setting off on our bikes, we found ourselves briefly on the Green Velo, the 1,240-mile waymarked trail that follows Masuria’s border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad before plunging southwards.

Our own route, along cycle paths and minor roads, brought us to Mamerki forest and the former headquarters of the Supreme Command of the German army. This was a grim reminder of the region’s violent past, and I was glad to leave the murky bunkers and return to the sunshine to climb the museum’s newly built 38-metre viewing tower.

 

Hotel Zamek, Ryn Photograph: PR

The views over the lake proved a welcome antidote, as did a blissful freewheel soon afterwards down a lane flanked by hundreds of tall oak trees.

Teutonic knights ruled the area for much of the Middle Ages, so it was fitting to spend a couple of nights in one of their former castles, the Hotel Zamek Ryn (doubles from £75 B&B, including spa), which overlooks Lake Ryn. Before dinner I descended to the stronghold’s 14th-century undercroft for a relaxing dip in a little swimming pool. Appetite duly whetted, in a nearby lakeside restaurant I sliced into some placki ziemniaczane – crispy potato pancake, served with steaming vegetables chopped into a tomato sauce.

The next day we found ourselves in the Lost World, or the River Sobiepanka as it’s known to mapmakers. We’d hired kayaks at Sorkwity (£10 a day, mazurypttk.pl) and headed out over the sylvan-shrouded Lake Lampackie to paddle a section of the remarkable Krutynia river kayak route, a 68-mile paddlers-only trail that threads its way across the region along innumerable lakes and rivers.

 

Twilight at Ukiel lake, Olsztyn. Photograph: Angelika Mu/Alamy

When we arrived at the riverside garden of Bar Sobiepanka – several hours, lakes, grebes and red-crested pochards later – a family was singing old Polish folk songs a cappella around a table, while thousands of aspen seeds in feathery clumps drifted through the air, creating the impression of summer snow. Zbyszek, who had come to pick us up, along with his kayaks, cheerily explained why we’d had to resort to our map to find some of the tiny outflows from the lakes. “We put up a lot of signs on wooden poles to show people the way … but beavers came along and chomped them all down.”

And so back to Olsztyn, where 11 lakes lie within the city limits. On one of them, Ukiel, sits the ultra-modern Tiffi Boutique Hotel (doubles from £60 B&B). I lounged on its balcony, gazing at trick-pulling jet-skiers. Dinner at the lakeside Przystań restaurant next door was washed down with a bottle of crisp Warminskie Rewolucje beer from the local Kormoran brewery.

 

Old City Gate in Olsztyn. Photograph: Alamy

Olsztyn’s surviving medieval buildings include an impressive city gate that became a prison and then a fire station, and the Gothic castle where Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus made the calculations that contributed to the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1582.

On a walking tour with Anna, a guide from the town’s tourist office, we encountered a pleasingly foppish bronze statue of the great man beside the river Łyna. “You see how shiny his nose is?” Anna asked. “That’s from all the local people stroking it to bring them luck.”

I couldn’t help thinking – given the good fortune the inhabitants have in living here in the first place – that this was being somewhat greedy.

• The trip was organised by Polish Tourism Organisation. Travel was provided by Interrail (a pass for five days’ travel within one month costs £193 for youths, aged 12-27; £251 adults, 28+, and £226 for seniors, 60+). More info from mazury.travel and visit.olsztyn.eu

Looking for a holiday with a difference? Browse Guardian Holidays to see a range of fantastic trips

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Could ‘fake text’ be the next global political threat?

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This article titled “Could ‘fake text’ be the next global political threat?” was written by Oscar Schwartz, for theguardian.com on Thursday 4th July 2019 05.01 UTC

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Earlier this month, an unexceptional thread appeared on Reddit announcing that there is a new way “to cook egg white[s] without a frying pan”.

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As so often happens on this website, which calls itself “the front page of the internet”, this seemingly banal comment inspired a slew of responses. “I’ve never heard of people frying eggs without a frying pan,” one incredulous Redditor replied. “I’m gonna try this,” added another. One particularly enthusiastic commenter even offered to look up the scientific literature on the history of cooking egg whites without a frying pan.

Related: New AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators

Every day, millions of these unremarkable conversations unfold on Reddit, spanning from cooking techniques to geopolitics in the Western Sahara to birds with arms. But what made this conversation about egg whites noteworthy is that it was not taking place among people, but artificial intelligence (AI) bots.

The egg whites thread is just one in a growing archive of conversations on a subreddit – a Reddit forum dedicated to a specific topic – that is made up entirely of bots trained to emulate the style of human Reddit contributors. This simulated forum was created by a Reddit user called disumbrationist using a tool called GPT-2, a machine learning language generator that was unveiled in February by OpenAI, one of the world’s leading AI labs.

Jack Clark, policy director at OpenAI, told me that chief among these concerns is how the tool might be used to spread false or misleading information at scale. In a recent testimony given at a House intelligence committee hearing about the threat of AI-generated fake media, Clark said he foresees fake text being used “for the production of [literal] ‘fake news’, or to potentially impersonate people who had produced a lot of text online, or simply to generate troll-grade propaganda for social networks”.

GPT-2 is an example of a technique called language modeling, which involves training an algorithm to predict the next most likely word in a sentence. While previous language models have struggled to generate coherent longform text, the combination of more raw data – GPT-2 was trained on 8m online articles – and better algorithms has made this model the most robust yet.

It essentially works like Google auto-complete or predictive text for messaging. But instead of simply offering one-word suggestions, if you prompt GPT-2 with a sentence, it can generate entire paragraphs of language in that style. For example, if you feed the system a line from Shakespeare, it generates a Shakespeare-like response. If you prompt it with a news headline, it will generate text that almost looks like a news article.

Alec Radford, a researcher at OpenAI, told me that he also sees the success of GPT-2 as a step towards more fluent communication between humans and machines in general. He says the intended purpose of the system is to give computers greater mastery of natural language, which may improve tasks like speech recognition, which is used by the likes of Siri and Alexa to understand your commands; and machine translation, which is used to power Google Translate.

But as GPT-2 spreads online and is appropriated by more people like disumbrationist – amateur makers who are using the tool to create everything from Reddit threads, to short stories and poems, to restaurant reviews – the team at OpenAI are also grappling with how their powerful tool might flood the internet with fake text, making it harder to know the origins of anything we read online.

Clark and the team at OpenAI take this threat so seriously that when they unveiled GPT-2 in February this year, they released a blogpost alongside it stating that they weren’t releasing the full version of the tool due to “concerns about malicious applications”. (They have since released a larger version of the model, which is being used to create the fake Reddit threads, poems and so on.)

It will just get harder to offer guarantees about the truth of information in the future

Jack Clark

For Clark, convincing machine text like the variety GPT-2 is capable of pose a similar threat to “deepfakes” – machine-learning generated fake images and videos that can been used to make people appear to do things they never did, say things they never said (like this video of former president Barack Obama). “They are essentially the same,” Clark told me. “You have technology that makes it cheaper and easier to fake something, which means that it will just get harder to offer guarantees about the truth of information in the future.”

However, some feel that this overstates the threat of fake text. According to Yochai Benkler, co-head of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, the most damaging instances of fake news are written by political extremists and trolls, and tend to be about controversial topics that “trigger deep-seated hatred”, like election fraud or immigration. While a system like GPT-2 can produce semi-coherent articles at scale, it is a long way from being able to replicate this type of psychological manipulation. “The simple ability to generate false text at scale is not likely to affect most forms of disinformation,” he told me.

Other experts have suggested that OpenAI exaggerated the malicious potential of GPT-2 in order to create hype around their research. For Zack Lipton, professor of business technologies at Carnegie Mellon University, the assessment of the risk of the technology was disingenuous.

“Of all the bad uses of AI – from recommender systems that lead to filter bubbles and the racial consequences that emerge from automated categorization – I would put the threat of language modeling at the bottom of the list,” he said. “What OpenAI have done is commandeered the discourse and fear about AI and used it to generate hype around their product.”

OpenAI’s concerns are being taken seriously by some. A team of researchers from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence recently developed a tool to detect “neural fake news”. Yejin Choi, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington who worked on the project, told me that detecting synthetic text is actually “fairly easy” due to the fact that generated text has a “statistical signature”, almost like a fingerprint, that can be easily identified.

While such digital forensics are useful, Britt Paris, a researcher at New York-based institute Data & Society, worries that such solutions misleadingly frame fake news as a technological problem when, in fact, most misinformation is created and spread online without the help of sophisticated technologies.

“We already have a ton of ways for generating false information and people do a pretty good job of circulating this stuff without the help of machines,” she said. Indeed, the most prominent instances of fake content online – such as the “drunk Nancy Pelosi” video released earlier this year – were created using rudimentary editing techniques that have been around for decades.

Benkler agrees, adding that fake news and disinformation are “first and foremost political-cultural problems, not technological problems”. Tackling the problem, he says, requires not better detection technologies, but an examination of the social conditions that have made fake news a reality.

Whether or not GPT-2, or a similar technology, becomes the misinformation machine that OpenAI are anxious about, there is a growing consensus that considering the social implications of a technology before it is released is good practice. At the same time, predicting precisely how technologies will be used and misused is notoriously difficult. Who would have thought 10 years ago that a recommendation algorithm for watching videos online would turn into a powerful radicalizing instrument?

Given the difficulty of predicting the potential harm of a technology, I thought I would see how GPT-2 faired in assessing its own capacity for spreading misinformation. “Do you think that you will be used to spread fake news and further imperil our already degraded information eco-system?” I prompted the machine.

“The fact that we can’t find the name of who actually post the article is a great clue,” it responded. “However, this person is still using social media sites to post the fake news with a clear purpose.”

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Can I buy a phone that doesn’t use anything from Google or Apple?

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This article titled “Can I buy a phone that doesn’t use anything from Google or Apple?” was written by Jack Schofield, for theguardian.com on Thursday 4th July 2019 07.00 UTC

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I have concerns about the likes of Google and Apple slurping up as much info as they can about me from my phone. I’ve tried looking online for alternatives and found mentions of things like /e/, Lineage, Sailfish OS etc, but they assume a level of tech knowledge far above what I have as a layman. So, are there any phones that are 100% free from Google and Apple software and hardware? How easy are such phones to obtain? Steve

Very easy. You can pick up a Nokia 105 (2017 edition) for about £15 or a dual-sim Nokia 106 (2018 edition) for about £16. These are only 2G phones but they have built-in FM radios, they can send texts, they are great for making phone calls and they are not based on Google or Apple technologies. A 3G or 4G phone would cost a bit more …

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Of course, you may also want to do smartphone-type things such as email and web browsing. In that case, buy a GPD Pocket 2, GPD MicroPC, One Mix Yoga, One Mix 1S, One Mix 2S or similar just-about-pocketable computer running Microsoft Windows 10 on a 7in screen. (GeekBuying stocks several models and is taking reservations on the One Mix 1S.) Mini-laptops may look expensive but they are cheaper than high-end smartphones.

This answers your question but it is obviously not the solution you are looking for …

The problem is that most people – including me – want to use Googly things on their phones. Gmail is the dominant email service, YouTube is the dominant short video provider, Google Search and Google Maps are very useful and Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser. There may be viable and sometimes preferable alternatives but you have to make an effort to use them. Most people don’t want to make the effort.

Even the Nokia 8110 4G has Google’s Assistant and Maps app installed. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Indeed, it looks as though the next generation of candy-bar phones will also include Google. Nokia’s latest 4G feature-phone, the Nokia 8110 “banana phone”, runs the KaiOS operating system, in which Google has invested $22 million. The Alcatel Go Flip 2, JioPhone and Orange Sanza are alternative KaiOS phones available in North America, India and Africa respectively. (Kai is named from the Chinese word for open, not the undead protagonist in the Lexx science fiction series.)

KaiOS includes WhatsApp – its main selling point – plus a web browser, Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps and Google Assistant. It’s claimed to be the second most popular operating system in India and could manage that in Africa. Some KaiOS phones cost less than $20.

KaiOS started as a fork of B2G (Boot to Gecko), which was an open source continuation of Firefox OS, which Mozilla stopped developing at the end of 2015. Gonk, the operating system underneath Gecko (which is Firefox’s web-rendering engine) is a small Linux kernel derived from Google’s AOSP, the Android Open Source Project.

In other words, the OS most likely to become a global alternative to Apple’s iOS and Google Android isn’t – and isn’t likely to be – 100% free from Google software. Even if it is not KaiOS, any future OS might use parts of AOSP because it is easier than developing everything from scratch. It could also pre-package access to some Google properties, even if they are just web apps, because most people want to use them.

A string of failures …

 

Windows Phone evolved from early Pocket PCs but never really took off, despite Microsoft’s best efforts. Photograph: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images

The fact that we have, essentially, a duopoly in the smartphone business is not for want of trying. Microsoft entered the market with a version of Windows running on ARM-based smartphones and it even made Windows available free on small-screen devices. The people who owned Windows phones seemed to love them and in 24 countries it overtook Apple’s iPhone in market share. However, the lack of apps was a major stumbling block and Microsoft abandoned its challenge, having lost billions of dollars in the attempt.

You can still buy Windows phones but most date from 2015-16 and will soon be out of support. I didn’t recommend buying them when they came out so I really wouldn’t recommend one now.

Canonical also had a go at the smartphone market with its Linux-based Ubuntu Touch. It failed. In this case, the development was taken over by the UBports Community, which developed a port for the OnePlus One smartphone in 2015. There are now a few others but I don’t expect Ubuntu Touch phones to appear in your local high street.

South Korea’s two smartphone manufacturers, Samsung and LG, would also love to have an independent operating system but success is unlikely. Samsung tried with Tizen, which was supported by the Linux Foundation. The Samsung Z series was launched in India and didn’t do well enough but Tizen is used in Samsung Gear smartwatches. LG could have a go with Palm’s Linux-based webOS, which it acquired from HP in 2013. WebOS first appeared on Palm Pre smartphones in 2009 but LG has mainly used it in smart TV sets.

Sailfish started with another failed Linux project, Nokia and Intel’s MeeGo. The latest version uses a graphical shell from Jolla, the Finnish company that appears to be its major backer. Sailfish can be ported to more alternative smartphones than Ubuntu Touch but I can’t see any current phones with Sailfish pre-installed. The same is true for both /e/ (formerly Eelo), which is a sort of de-Googled Android, and LineageOS, which is a reborn CyanogenMod.

You main hope is Purism’s forthcoming Librem 5, which seems to be exactly what you want. Whether it can buck the trend remains to be seen.

In general, the problem with Linux on smartphones looks much like its problem on PCs. Many and various groups enjoy developing new versions of the operating system, which are all more or less doomed from birth. None of them have the skills, the interests or the money to create viable platforms that include the hardware, apps, services, packaging, marketing, advertising, distribution and support on the sort of scale needed to sustain a real product. Without those, they are unlikely to attract much interest beyond hobbyists and enthusiasts.

Future success?

 

Donald Trump’s actions against Huawei have triggered a shift in thinking from China, with its firms seeking alternatives to US software and chips. Photograph: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images

Things may change thanks mainly to the current American president. Trump sent China and the rest of the world a wakeup call by trying to exclude Huawei – the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturer and the leader in 5G – from using American technology. Huawei was already developing its own Android app-compatible operating system, currently known as Hongmen OS, as an alternative. The potential loss of up to $30bn in sales per year suggests there will be no shortage of money or manpower for its future development.

Indeed, China has a powerful incentive to replace all the American technology it uses with home-grown alternatives. This may take decades but in the long run, it will hurt Google, Intel, Qualcomm and numerous other US companies. The genie is out of the bottle and the Americans will never be able to put it back.

Hongmen, aka Ark OS, may not have a lot of appeal in Europe but it could do well in Asian countries that already do more trade with China than with the US.

Meanwhile, the EU’s latest antitrust case against Google should allow phone manufacturers to offer alternative browsers and search engines. It should also enable Android smartphone suppliers to sell phones with alternative versions of Android in Europe, which Google did not allow them to do before. A major player such as Samsung or Huawei could therefore test the market with a Google-free Android phone. In which case, you can vote with your wallet.

Remember the apps!

 

Smartphones are simple shells without the apps to run on them. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Whatever happens with Apple and Google, people buy smartphones to run apps and most apps appear to be compromising your privacy. In 2017 a study from the University of California at Berkeley found that around 70% of apps shared your data with third-party services (PDF).

A recent Washington Post story based on Disconnect.me technology found trackers were rife in the journalist’s iPhone apps. Google, of course, banned Disconnect Mobile from its Play store way back in 2014. In a blogpost, the company wrote: “Google refuses to explain their decision, other than to say that our app won’t be allowed if it interferes with any ads; even ads that contain malware and steal your identity.”

The app economy, like the web economy, is ultimately based on surveillance. That isn’t likely to change unless the EU does something about it. And so far, despite the GDPR and three antitrust cases against Google, the EU has left smartphone tracking revenues unharmed.

Have you got a question? Email it to Ask.Jack@theguardian.com

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High and healthy: an eco-minded break in Italy’s South Tirol

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This article titled “High and healthy: an eco-minded break in Italy’s South Tirol” was written by Mark Pickering, for The Guardian on Tuesday 25th June 2019 05.30 UTC

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Of all the things I’ve ever wanted to do in life, being naked and trapped inside a haystack has never been one of them. But four hours into my stay in Italy, that’s exactly where I find myself.

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I’m in South Tirol – a place renowned for its affinity with nature. Bordering Austria and Switzerland, it is a gorgeous sliver of rocky landscape, peppered with lagoons, spiky peaks and orchard-lined hills. It is also one of the most environmentally sound places on the map, priding itself on its sustainable, eco-friendly practices.

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Our first stop – and host of my straw-chaffing induction – is Gargazzone, a sleepy village north-west of the provincial capital, Bolzano. On arrival at Theiner’s Garten – which describes itself as a bio-hotel, with a wellness garden, sustainable power and organic produce – I foolishly ask what the most nature-loving Tirolean thing I could do is. The result is to be led immediately downstairs to a room, told to get undressed and lie on a table strewn with itchy hay.

Theiner’s Garten. Photograph: Hannes Niederkofler

After getting into place, the masseur unceremoniously dumps a further bale’s worth on top of me, wraps me in white gauze then leaves my mummified, Worzel Gummidge-esque corpse to stew for 45 minutes. Every 10 minutes, a sinister bubbling erupts from beneath me, and a burst of steam rises to invigorate the aroma of the hay.

Related: Haven and history: a refuge in the Italian Dolomites

“The hay bath is designed to relieve pain in the kidneys and joints,” says Stefan Hütter, the hotel owner. “The locals find it relaxing.” That’s not exactly how I would describe it but after learning not to wriggle painfully around in the prickles, the experience is oddly enjoyable.

When my wife picks me up, we head for a swim at nearby Naturbad (€7 for a day ticket, evening €3.20), a manmade, mountain-enveloped lido, bestrewn with phytoplankton and zooplankton that clean the water organically instead of chemicals. The natural, chlorine-free pool is lush and the surroundings –hill-lined orchards with distant shards of white Dolomite rock – is postcard-perfect.

 

Naturbad Photograph: Petra Pickering

A 10-minute stroll takes us to Kathi’s Jausenstation, a family-run restaurant framed by a sprawling rose garden, and popular with radler (shandy)-drinking cyclists. Enjoying some spinach gnocchi (mains from €7) and a glass of Hugo – the elderflower aperitif named after the Bolzano barman who invented it in 2005, we can immediately see how South Tirol’s cultural cohabitation works, with staff switching effortlessly between German and Italian and a menu that boasts both schnitzel and spaghetti.

Related: High heaven: hiking Italy’s Cottian Alps

“It wasn’t always like that,” Hütter tells us later. “Twenty years ago, if you were an Austrian girl and you brought an Italian boy home, there could be trouble.”

Until the end of the first world war, South Tirol was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire but was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1919, as a reward for joining the allies in 1915. After an initial wave of Austro-German persecution, and a brief period of German occupation in the latter stages of the second world war, South Tirol has steadily recovered and now exists as a harmonious, extensively self-governed province.

“The rest of Italy is 10 years behind what we are doing here in South Tirol,” Hütter claims, referring to the region’s upsurge in ecological thinking. “The other week I bought an organic ice-cream and some Italians said ‘Why would you buy an organic ice-cream? Italian ice-cream is the best in the world as it is!’”

 

Kathi’s Jausenstation, Gargazonne Photograph: Petra Pickering

The province is indeed about as sustainable place as you will find. Thanks to large sums of public investment, a third of the region is now powered by various sustainable sources – hydropower, biomass, biogas, as well as wind and geothermal energy – and the new, back-to-basics approach to farming has transformed the region into a vibrant organic food community. What is particularly noticeable though, is the amount of green travel – bikes and ebikes are everywhere, and there are more than 80 public charging points for electric cars.

Our next stop is south at Caldaro, a grape-growing municipality in the heart of South Tirol’s wine region. After a quick stop at Lago di Caldaro – a swimmer-filled lake by morning, windsurf-flipping spectacle by afternoon – we arrive at one of the three vineyards of Alois Lageder – the legendary wine producer, who takes us on a personal tour. As well as being regarded as one of South Tirol’s greatest exporters, his winery’s set of strict biodynamic principles is what beds him nicely into the landscape of this eco-conscious region.

 

Alois Lageder at one of his vineyards Photograph: Petra Pickering

We sample a quintet of refreshing whites, then two of the region’s indigenous red grapes – very light and drinkable varieties known as schiava and lagrein. It is when we reach Lageder’s favoured pinot noir, however, that his tour reaches its crescendo, his right hand shooting out theatrically with each describing word as he lauds “the complexity … the power … the finesse!”

Related: 10 of the best new summer activity holidays in the Alps

We finish the day with a short hike to the Maurerberg alpine refuge (€48 a night) in San Martino in Badia, in the heart of the Dolomites. After driving up the mountainside’s hairpin bends, we park at Passo delle Erbe, then climb steeply for 60-minutes. It’s arduous, but when we reach the top, the views are spectacular. Whitewashed pillars of greatness stand before us, with unspoiled, sun-kissed nature all around.

Our tour ends in San Candido, an old market town in the Puster valley. It’s also known as a green valley; each village has its own eco energy plant and our hotel, the Leitlhof, is powered by the hotel’s wood chip cogeneration plant. The town itself is a charming clutter of churches and Austrian bistros, flanked by the imposing 3,000-metre Haunold mountain, replete with exciting mini-bobsleighs we giddily spend the afternoon whizzing down (€20.90 for three rides).

 

Mini bobsleighs at San Candido, in front of Haunold mountain Photograph: Petra Pickering

Before hitting the town, we make a brief stop at nearby Lago di Dobbiaco – a lake enveloped by rocky peaks and bordered by a huge nature reserve. Around it, couples picnic, but no one’s swimming. We dip a toe into the inviting-looking emerald water – it’s freezing. We quickly rejoin the throng and settle for a sandwich on the bank instead.

In the evening, we burrow our way inside bustling vinotheque Uhrmacher’s Weinstube. It’s the undisputed local hub and has customers, and their dogs, spilling merrily out onto the streets. Pouncing on two free stools at the bar, I enquire why one of the white wines is so affordable (€1.40 a glass). “Michaelstrunk is from Bolzano,” the barmaid tells us. “It’s got a very neutral taste – but it’s what the locals drink.”

She pours us a couple of glasses – it’s much nicer than “neutral” – and as one man outside strikes up an accordion, almost simultaneously another starts playing guitar ballads in the saloon bar. With traditional Austrian folk hitting one ear, and Italian love songs the other, it seems a rather poignant summary of the trip as a whole: drinking delicious local wine in a rustic pub, surrounded by a friendly coupling of cultures.

THREE MORE SOUTH TIROL HIGHLIGHTS

Taser Alm

At 1,450m above sea level and accessed by cable car (€10.70 return), this European Eco-label-awarded farmstead near Merano is an idyllic retreat, with high ropes and a great kids’ adventure playground. The view is a heavenly canvass of mountains and hills, punctuated by cute alpacas and llamas roaming the upper pastures.
Must do: Order the restaurant dumplings with locally forested chanterelle mushrooms. That said, make sure you don’t slice them. “There’s a South Tirol saying that when you use a knife, you’re also breaking the chef’s heart,” the waiter will tell you. “It means the dumplings are too hard.” They’re really not though; they’re gooey and delicious.
• taseralm.com

Campo Tures

This sleepy Tirolean town is abundant with castles and churches but is also great for incredible hikes, such as the walk to the Riva waterfalls. However, its main allure is the tranquil atmosphere.
Must do: A night in the Feldmilla Design Hotel (doubles from €134pp B&B). Beneath the gorgeous 13th-century Tures Castle, this climate-neutral accommodation nuzzles the River Ahr, a relaxing stream that powers the hotel and most of the town, too.

Casere

 

Chisetta di Santo Spirito. Photograph: Petra Pickering

This village close to the Austrian border is lined with brightly clothed grandmothers sat in front of their houses industriously embroidering kloppeln (tablecloths). It is also the home of the famous, though miniscule, Chisetta di Santo Spirito (Chapel of the Holy Ghost).
Must do: Go round the back of the chapel. Wedged into it is a giant rock, the two separated only by a crack. It’s said that if a person successfully passes through, their sins are forgiven. It takes a bit of unholy body manipulation to manage it – but if you do, you’ll feel a small, slightly cramped sense of accomplishment.

The trip was provided by the South Tyrol tourist board, suedtirol.info

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iOS 13: how to install Apple’s latest iPhone software today

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This article titled “iOS 13: how to install Apple’s latest iPhone software today” was written by Samuel Gibbs, for theguardian.com on Tuesday 25th June 2019 09.17 UTC

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Apple has released the public beta version of its much-anticipated free iOS 13 software update for iPhones and the first edition of its new iPadOS for tablets.

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Those eager to try the latest features, including the new dark mode, faster Face ID, Memoji stickers and smarter photo organisation, can now install iOS 13 on a compatible iPhone or iPadOS on their Apple tablet.

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Announced at the beginning of June, iOS 13 and iPadOS were initially released as a developer test versions but are now available for the general public to try before their full release in September.

To try out iOS 13 you will need an iPhone 6S, iPhone SE, iPod touch (seventh generation) or newer device. For iPadOS you will need an iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, iPad Pro or newer device.

The iOS 13 Public beta download is now available for various newer iPhones. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Installing the beta is fairly straightforward:

1. Make a full backup of your phone or tablet as, if you dislike the update, reverting back to iOS 12 will require a full wipe and restore of the device.

2. Visit Apple’s beta site on your iPhone or iPad and sign in with your Apple ID (the one you use for iTunes and the App Store).

3. Download the beta settings profile.

4. Open the Settings app, tap on the new Profile menu option near the top and install the Profile using your pin code.

5. Reboot your iPhone or iPad.

6. Connect to wifi.

7. Check for updates in the settings app under General > Software Update.

8. Download and install the iOS 13 or iPadOS Public beta (this may take some time).

Once installed on your phone or tablet iOS 13 and iPadOS will automatically update as new beta versions are released (there were 10 for the public beta of iOS 12). As ever, it is important to make sure you install updates promptly, as bugs are fixed on a regular basis and older versions will no longer be supported.

It is also worth noting that this is very much still an early test version of Apple’s software and bugs will be present that can cause crashes and other issues. Battery life and device performance may not be the same either.

Some experienced developers have been warning about the testing nature of iOS 13 and iPadOS.

Don’t install the betas yet.

Tons of rough edges, still. I wish I’d waited.

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) June 24, 2019

Also:

– Watch apps lose connection with the phone.
– Several apps render strangely in Dark Mode
– Random UI freezes
– Some apps (including my own RECaf) simply don’t work.

In short, everything you’d expect. Last year gave many a false impression of what beta life is like. https://t.co/aPbuVWCS5S

— jcieplinski (@jcieplinski) June 24, 2019

The advice is to install it on an older phone or tablet, if you have one, or wait until the next beta update, which is likely to be more stable and complete. But for those eager to try the very latest iPhone or iPad software, this is your chance.

• 
  

  Best smartphone 2019: iPhone, Samsung, OnePlus and Huawei compared and ranked

  
  

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Mars rover's large methane discovery excites scientists

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This article titled “Mars rover’s large methane discovery excites scientists” was written by Ian Sample Science editor, for The Guardian on Monday 24th June 2019 16.16 UTC

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Nasa’s Curiosity rover has detected its largest belch of methane on Mars so far, fuelling speculation that the robot may have trundled through a cloud of waste gas released by microbial Martians buried deep under the surface.

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Mission scientists announced on Monday that Curiosity had measured a record-breaking 21 parts per billion (ppb) of methane in the air in Gale crater, the rover’s landing site and area of exploration. The level is substantially more than the 5.8ppb it sensed on 16 June 2013.

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Curiosity touched down on the red planet in August 2012 and has recorded a number of sharp spikes in methane and a fluctuating background level of the gas that appears to rise and fall with the seasons.

The latest measurement has excited some Mars enthusiasts because on Earth, much of the methane in the air comes from living things that release it one way or another as waste gas. But methane can have far more mundane origins than microscopic Martians, such as reactions between water and certain types of rock, and Nasa’s rover cannot distinguish between these.

While Mars was once warm and home to coursing rivers and giant lakes, it is now exceptionally dry and battered with intense radiation. If any life exists on the planet, it would probably have to be sheltering deep underground.

“With our current measurements, we have no way of telling if the methane source is biology or geology, or even ancient or modern,” said Paul Mahaffy from Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt in Maryland, US.

The methane spike was recorded by the rover’s sample analysis at Mars (SAM) tunable laser spectrometer. After noticing the methane surge in data beamed back to Earth last week, mission scientists commanded the rover to perform follow-up experiments over the weekend.

The measurement deepens the mystery of why a European Space Agency probe sent to Mars to nail down the origins of the planet’s methane has so far found no traces of the gas. One possible explanation is that any methane released on the planet is broken down before it reaches the altitude of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).

In April, a team of Italian scientists traced a plume of methane on Mars back to a particular spot on the surface where the movement of a geological fault may have released bubbles of the gas trapped in Martian permafrost.

Manish Patel, an Open University researcher who works on the TGO mission, said the latest detection by Curiosity was what the European team had been waiting for. Until now, the TGO has not looked for methane on Mars at the same time as Curiosity. “The previous ‘discrepancy’ in findings was always complicated by the fact that we never made measurements at the same time,” Patel said. “There was always a possibility that something was occurring in the atmosphere to trap or remove the methane before we arrived to measure it.”

He added: “Now that both Curiosity and TGO are active on Mars, we have the chance to compare measurements made at the same time, which will allow direct comparison. Curiosity will likely continue to make measurements, and it will be interesting to see whether they still see the methane, or whether it disappears immediately.”

In the meantime, scientists on TGO will examine their own data to see if any trace of the methane was picked up by their own instruments high above the Martian surface.

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10 of Europe’s best hostels near city railway stations

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This article titled “10 of Europe’s best hostels near city railway stations” was written by Rachel Dixon, for The Guardian on Monday 24th June 2019 05.30 UTC

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Amsterdam

All five Clink hostels can be found near train stations: two in King’s Cross in London, and two more opening soon in Dublin and Lisbon, each a few minutes’ walk from the main stations. The fifth hostel is ClinkNoord is opposite Centraal Station on the other side of the Amstel river. A free, 24-hour ferry runs every seven minutes during the day and every 15 minutes at night. It takes five minutes to cross, then it is a 300-metre walk to the hostel, which is a converted 1920s laboratory. There are private en suite rooms (single, twin, doubles and quads), plus mixed and women-only dorms (sleeping four or 10). The cafe serves homemade banana bread and all-night panini; the bar has a happy hour from 5pm-7pm, food until 11pm and regular live music. Daily events include city walking and cycling tours, yoga and meditation sessions, and tasting sessions of Dutch beers.
• Dorm beds from £13, doubles from £65, clinkhostels.com

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Rome

Generator was launched in London in 1995, and now has 13 hotels in central locations across Europe, from Hamburg to Madrid (as well as Miami, and Washington DC opening this year). All of the hostels have a wide range of great-value shared rooms and dorms (including female-only dorms) and cool communal spaces, from rooftop bars to chill-out lounges. Just a short walk from the Colosseum and Termini station, Generator Rome is set over seven floors, and has a bar inspired by old Havana’s decadent charms. Its deli-style menu is sourced from Mercato Esquilino across the street. The hotel’s accommodation ranges from private rooms sleeping up to four, to shared dorms for up to six.
• Dorms from £13, twins from £52, staygenerator.com

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Copenhagen

Danhostels is the Danish equivalent of the UK’s YHA. There are about 70 across Denmark, including the superbly situated Danhostel Copenhagen City. This huge hostel, comprising 1,020 beds over 192 rooms and 16 floors, is in the heart of the city, by the Copenhagen Harbour Baths, a few minutes’ walk from City Hall Square, the Tivoli Gardens and the central station. Large, modern dorms sleep six to 10; private rooms sleep up to eight. The bar and restaurant were recently revamped. The buffet breakfast (£9) includes crackers made from insect flour, Bar 50 has a daily happy hour and there are free daily walking tours of the city.
• Dorms from £20, doubles from £77, danhostelcopenhagencity.dk

Berlin

Related: 10 of the best railway hotels in Europe: readers’ travel tips

A&O has a chain of hostels across Germany and Austria, plus a handful in other cities, including Prague, Venice and Vienna. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof branch, which was renovated in March, is a 10-minute walk from the central station. The lobby has a bar with table football and pool, and there is a roof terrace. (Top tip: travellers who look after the housekeeping of their room and bed get a free drink.) There is a mixture of en suite doubles and dorms, and a €7 buffet breakfast. The government area, with the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate and, beyond, the Tiergarten is only a 20-minute walk away.
• Dorm beds from £9, twins from £49, aohostels.com

Barcelona

A three-minute walk from Barcelona-Sants train station, Meeting Point is a bright, modern hostel in a quiet neighbourhood. Rooms range from an accessible twin to dorms with en suites, with up to six beds (mixed and women-only), all with air conditioning and free lockers. The hostel doesn’t serve breakfast but there is a kitchen, plus a common room, terrace, self-service laundry and a games room. The Camp Nou stadium is a 20-minute walk and Plaça de Catalunya and the old town are 10 minutes away by train. Sights such as the Sagrada Família and Port Vell are within 20 minutes on the metro.
• Dorm beds from £20, meetingpointhostels.com

Budapest

With hostels in eight cities across Europe, from Seville and Porto to Prague and Kraków, Hostel One prides itself on friendly staff with plenty of local knowledge, and good, central locations. There are two properties in Budapest (so good we’ll go all the way up to 11 with this top-10 list), each within half an hour’s walk of Keleti station. Hostel One Budapest, which is slightly closer, has six-, eight- and 10-bed mixed dorms. Hostel One Basilica has private rooms as well as four- to 14-bed dorms, including one women’s dorm. Both are sociable places, with three common rooms (for working, relaxing and partying), a bar and kitchen, free daily city tours and nightly pub crawls. The price includes dinner, making these hostels particularly excellent value.
• Dorms from about £12, doubles from £47, hostelone.com

Paris

“Party hostels”, with 12 outposts in the UK – eight in London, plus one in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Bath and ,Newquay – St Christopher’s Inns can also be found in many of the major cities on the Interrail trail: Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Bruges, Amsterdam and Prague. They are not for those who want a quiet night – all have a bar attached and a lively atmosphere. One of the Paris hostels is just across the road from the Gare du Nord Eurostar station. Rooms range from singles and doubles to 10-bed dorms, some women-only. There are free city walking tours and daily pub crawls, and guests get 25% off food at Belushi’s bar downstairs, which has a daily happy hour from 4pm-9pm.
• Dorms from £18 including breakfast, doubles from £34, st-christophers.co.uk

Kraków

Don’t be put off by the name – Mosquito is a buzzing (but bug-free) hostel for travellers who want a mix of socialising and relaxing. There is a chill-out room with bean bags, books, games and a guitar, and an activities room where you can meet fellow travellers. Different events take place every night from 9.15pm, including a traditional Polish dinner (Thursday), vodka shots (Saturday) and Polish wedding games (Sunday). At 11pm, staff take guests out to the best local bars and places to sample pierogi and zapiekanka. Rooms range from double en suites to 12-bed dorms. The hostel is a few minutes’ walk from Kraków Główny, the main station.
• Dorms from about £12 including breakfast, doubles from £40, mosquitohostel.com

Prague

Sophie’s is a stylish hostel in a 19th-century art nouveau building in Prague’s so-called new town (founded in 1348!), a five-minute walk from Wenceslas Square. Accommodation includes apartments, double rooms and dorms – the latter have artwork by a Czech designer and bathrooms with rain showers. The women-only dorm has proper beds (no bunks) and a private kitchen. For more luxury, guests can book a wellness session in the sauna and jacuzzi at Miss Sophie’s hotel next door. An all-you-can-eat cold buffet breakfast costs a fiver, or fill up for the day on bacon, eggs and pancakes with the £7 hot brunch. Sophie’s is a 20-minute walk from the main station, or two stops on the metro.
• Dorms from £13, doubles from £70, sophieshostel.com

Vienna

Meininger has 28 budget hotel-cum-hostels in 16 European cities, including new ones in Brussels and Munich. Of the three branches in the Austrian capital, Vienna Central Station in the Favoriten district is less than 10 minutes’ walk from the international terminus. There are single and double rooms, and dorms sleeping up to six (up to eight in the women-only dorm). As well as backpackers, the hotel attracts families and business travellers, so the atmosphere is less raucous than some hostels, but there is still a bar, lounge and games room for socialising. The Keplerplatz metro station is on the doorstep for travel into the city centre.
• Dorms from £13, doubles from £43, meininger-hotels.com

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