For years, Google has been accused of harvesting data from Android phones without users’ consent. A California lawsuit was settled for $314 million last year, and another class action lawsuit recently reached a resolution that could mean payouts for another 100 million people.

While not admitting fault, Google reached a preliminary settlement in the class action lawsuit Taylor v. Google LLC in January, agreeing to pay $135 million, and the official settlement website for the lawsuit is now live. 

The final approval hearing won’t occur until June 23, when the court will hear objections and consider whether Google’s settlement is fair. After that, the court will decide whether to approve the $135 million settlement. 

In the meantime, if you qualify and want to be paid as part of the settlement, you can select your preferred payment method on the official website. There, you can find information on speaking at the June 23 court hearing and on how to exclude yourself or write to the court to object by May 29.

As part of the settlement, Google will update its Google Play terms of service to clarify that certain data transfers do occur passively even when you’re not using your Android device, and that cellular data may be relied upon when not connected to Wi-Fi. This can’t always be disabled, but users will be asked to consent to it when setting up their device. 

Google will also fully stop collecting data when its «allow background data usage» option is toggled off. 

Who can be part of the Google data settlement?

In order to join the Taylor v. Google LLC settlement, you must meet four qualifications:

1. Be a living, individual human being in the US.
2. Have used an Android mobile device with a cellular data plan.
3. Have used the aforementioned device at any time from Nov. 12, 2017, to the date when the settlement receives final approval.
4. You’re not a class member in the Csupo v. Google LLC lawsuit, which is similar but specifically for California residents.

The final approval hearing is on June 23, so you can add your payment method until then. The hearing’s date and time may change, and any updates will be posted on the settlement website. 

If you choose to do nothing, you will still be issued a settlement payment, but you may not receive it if you don’t select a payment method.

How much could I get paid by Google?

It’s not currently known exactly how much each settlement class member will receive, but the cap is $100. Payments will be distributed after final court approval and after any appeals are resolved.

After all administrative, tax and attorney costs are paid, the settlement administrator will attempt to pay each member an equal amount. If any funds remain after payments are sent, and it’s economically feasible, they will be redistributed to members who were previously and successfully paid. If it’s not economically feasible, the funds will go to an organization approved by the court.

When AT&T recently revamped its unlimited phone plans, the top-level Premiere 2.0 plan cost more than the Unlimited Premium PL plan it replaced. (The Extra 2.0 and Value 2.0 plans came in as less expensive options than their predecessors.) And then the company raised the costs of «retired» plans, encouraging subscribers to switch over — but not giving folks willing to pay for top-tier plans much incentive to do so.

Now it looks like AT&T is going to add a pricier unlimited plan that includes more hotspot data to the top spot of its lineup.

As reported by Android Authority referencing a video by Sneed Mobile Tech, AT&T will soon introduce an Elite 2.0 plan that includes 250GB of hotspot data as well as unlimited talk, text and high-speed data in 20 Latin American countries.

The new plan is reportedly priced at $75 per line on an account with four lines. AT&T lets you mix and match their plans on an account, with the per-line price going down the more lines you have. A single-line price is not listed, but Sneed Mobile Tech speculates it could run $110.

It will also include the company’s AT&T Turbo feature that boosts data throughput and video quality and offers unlimited international talk and text, 20GB of global data and «smartwatch and tablet access,» according to the video, which appears to show a leaked data sheet detailing the differences between plans.

An AT&T representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The shifting patterns of ocean currents shape our climate and weather. Even today, understanding how ocean currents behave is challenging. But researchers have developed an AI tool that can map currents across large swaths of the ocean with a level of detail previously unachievable. 

The team from the University of California, San Diego, published their work in the journal Nature Geoscience on April 13. They trained an AI network using thermal imagery from weather satellites in an approach they call GOFlow (Geostationary Ocean Flow). 

«We can now observe small, fast-changing ocean currents from space with much greater detail and frequency than before,» Luc Lenain, an oceanographer at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the study’s first author, told CNET. «Those currents are important because they help control how heat, carbon, nutrients and pollutants move through the ocean.»

Ebbs and flows

A few years ago, while Lenain was looking through thermal satellite images of the North Atlantic Ocean, he noticed visual patterns in temperature changes from major currents, such as the Gulf Stream. He had an idea for a new way to measure ocean currents by taking what his eye could see and putting it into an AI tool.

The researchers trained the GOFlow neural network on simulated ocean currents, then used It on real images from a weather satellite. The AI tool used satellite images to track surface temperatures, which shift due to underlying ocean currents. 

By tracking temperature changes in the images, GOFlow inferred which current caused them. 

The team checked their work against data that was gathered by ships in the Gulf Stream region. They also tested GOFlow’s results against more traditional satellite methods that rely on tracking height changes in the ocean surface. 

The researchers found that their outputs aligned with other ship and satellite results, but they say that GOFlow also provided greater detail on ocean currents than had previously been documented only in computer models. 

«These kinds of [AI] driven approaches are not replacing physics,» Lenain said. «Instead, AI is helping us extract physical information that is already present in satellite observations, but has been difficult to recover with traditional methods until now.» 

The view from above

Despite GOFlow’s achievements, the researchers note that the tool has some limitations, such as cloud cover: Cloudy days can block a satellite’s view of the ocean. They say future work will incorporate additional satellite data to fill these gaps. 

The computer code developed by the researchers will be made publicly available to help further work. 

«We wanted to make this work transparent, reproducible and useful to the broader community,» Lenain said. «We see GOFlow as a stepping stone toward more routine use of large remote-sensing datasets combined with machine learning.»

Gathering satellite images to learn about ocean currents is an example of Earth observation. Governments and militaries, as well as farmers and insurance companies, rely on this data for decision-making.

The GOFlow project is part of a larger AI trend, as AI tools can speed up and improve the accuracy of data analysis. NASA, the European Space Agency and private space firms have begun building and testing AI tools that can analyze such data.