MacworldIm sure this sounds familiar: Youre trying to install the latest iOS release, upgrade to a new iPhone, take photos or record video, or just download that cool app everyones talking about, and your iPhone says the storage is full.Youve already deleted every app you dont think you need, and theres still not enough space on your iPhone. So you open Settings, tap General, then iPhone Storage, and, sure enough, your iPhone is full. Worst of all, ahuge chunk of it is just listed as Other (renamed System Data in iOS 15).Whats that supposed to mean? How do you get rid of it? The System Data/Otherstorage sections are mysterious and confusing, and theres no one answer that works for everyone, but hopefully, this guide will help you deal with this problem.Latest iPhone release: iPhone SE (March 2022), iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max (September 2024)Latest iOS release: iOS 18.2.1 (January 2025)Latest iOS beta: iOS 18.3How to view your iPhone storageTo see how much storage all your apps and data are taking up on your iPhones storage, open the Settings app, select General, then iPhone Storage. At the top, youll see a bar graph showing your total iPhone storage and which types of data are filling it up. Beneath that, youll find a list of applications on your phone and how much room they take up, both for the app itself and its stored data.It may take several seconds for your iPhone to show the graph, as it takes time to scan and analyze its storage. Even after the chart first appears, youll want to wait several seconds more for it to stabilize, as the app list and storage sizes can change while your phone completes its analysis.Youll find your iPhone storage details a few layers deep in the Settings app.What is System Data (or Other) on iPhone?Your iPhone Storage menu will divide that bar up top into familiar categories like Apps, Media, Photos, and Mail, but also a System Data (iOS 15 and later) or Other category that is sometimes very large. Its common for System Data to be in the 5GB to 20GB range, but if its way over 20GB, it has probably grown out of control. You can scroll all the way down to the bottom of the app list where you will see iOS, which are the files required by the system and are usually around 10GB, and System Data, which are files other than apps and downloads that are collected by iOS. Tap on System Data to see how much space it is taking up.The System Data/Othercategory is big and varied because its a real catch-all category. It comprises system caches, logs, Siri voices (if youve downloaded more than one), updates, and so much more. One of the biggest culprits for System Data/Othergrowing out of hand is streaming lots of music and video. When you download video or music from the iTunes Store, TV app, or Music app, its indexed as Media. But streamshave caches used to ensure smooth playback, and those are categorized as System Data/Other.Safaris caches can start to grow pretty large, too. And if you send tons of texts with images or video, the caches for that can start to fill up a lot of space. Your iPhone is supposed to manage these caches to keep your storage from becoming completely full, but it doesnt always do a great job.Clearing your Safari data might reduce the size of Other.We discuss how to delete Other storage on a Mac and how to delete System Data on a Mac separate articles.How to reduce the size of System Data/Other on an iPhoneYou cant get rid of System Data/Otherentirely, but you can sometimes reduce its size.First, lets try clearing your Safari caches. Open Settings > Safari and choose Clear History and Website Data. If you have alot of Safari tabs open on your iPhone, you might want to close most of them, too.You might also want to change Messages to save fewer old messages. Open Settings, then Messages, and scroll down to the Message History setting. By default, Keep Messages is set to Forever, but you may want to change it to 1 Year or even 30 Days to reduce the data that the Messages app caches. Just beware that doing this will mean old messages will be deletedso if you have any messages you want to keep find a way to back them up. If youre a heavy texter, your Messages app might be filling up your storage with alot of data.Finally, go back to iPhone Storage and look at the apps list. Most of the apps store data that is categorized as Apps, but some will keep caches that are categorized as System Data/Other. If, say, the Podcasts app is taking up a couple of gigabytes of space, its likely mostly cached data. Deleting the app and re-downloading it might put a dent in the System Data/Other category.The nuclear option: Backup and reset your iPhoneYou can go through your iPhone trying to delete every little cache that could grow the size of System Data/Otherstorage, but if youreally want to make it as small as possible, you need to back up your phone and reset it. This can take a little while. The best way to do this is to use your Mac or PC.On a Mac running macOS 10.15 Catalina or later:First, connect your iPhone to your Mac with the bundled USB-C-to-Lightning cable.When prompted on your iPhone, tap Trust and enter your passcode.In the Finder sidebar on your Mac, select your iPhone under Locations.Click the General tab.Select Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac.To encrypt your backup data and protect it with a password, check the Encrypt local backup box.Click Back Up Now.Note: You can also connect your iPhone to your computer wirelessly if you set up syncing over Wi-Fi.FoundryOn a Mac running macOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier, or a PCOn a PC or a Mac with macOS 10.14 or earlier you can use iTunes to back up your phone. After you connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC, select your iPhone by clicking the little phone icon in the upper left, and under Backups, chooseThis Computer and check theEncrypt local backupbox to protect your backup with a password. Then click the button toBack up now.Reset and restoreWhen the backup is done, disconnect your iPhone, head to Settings > General > Reset, and select Erase All Content and Settings. This will return your iPhone to its factory settings, just like when you took it out of the box. When it restarts and its in the initial setup process, re-connect it to your computer with iTunes open, and follow the instructions on the screen to restore your device.This is the longest and most involved way to reduce the size of System Data/Other storage, but its also the best. Theres just no way to get it any smaller than it will be after a fresh reset and restore.Apple iPhone 14 PlusRead our reviewPrice When Reviewed:1.149Best Prices Today:849 at Apple | 792,28 at baur.de | 793,18 at OTTOApple iPhone 14 ProRead our reviewPrice When Reviewed:1.299

MacworldHard disk drives (HDDs) work by spinning their internal platters. Only while spinning can data be read or written. Its been decades since they gained the ability to remain online butnotspinning in a standby state. This reduces power and can also reduce wear and tear produced by heat output and mechanical usage.macOS automatically sends a signal to internal HDDs (on older Macs) and external ones that tell them to spin down after a period during which there has been no access to data stored on them. The next time an HDD is needed, there is a slight delay while the drive spins up to speed. Some people have an intermittent but continual need for HDD usage, and they find that the constant short delays add upand theyre rightly concerned about frequent spinning up and down causing its own set of wear-and-tear issues.Apple provides a friendly way to control that behavior in System Settings via the Put hard disks to sleep when possible setting:On a Mac laptop, go to System Settings > Battery and click Options. You can choose between Always (the default) and three alternatives: Only on Battery, Only on Power Adapter, or Never. Only on Battery or Power Adapter puts a drive to sleep when possible only with that energy source, which may remain desirable. Never will do as it saysmacOS never attempts to spin a drive down.On a Mac desktop, go to System Settings > Energy. There, you can enable or disable the setting, as desktop Macs require a power adapter.A laptop Mac offers four options for hard drive sleep.FoundryA desktop Mac lets you enable or disable hard drive spin-down.FoundrySome HDDs and some installations of macOS may ignore that setting and continue to spin an HDD down after a short interval. If you find that unacceptable, you can open Applications > Utilities > Terminal and enter the following command followed by a Return; enter an administrative password when requested:sudo pmset -a disksleep 0The0means never, but you can set a higher value in minutes, like30to mean 30 minutes.You cant issue a command line instruction to reset the HDD sleep duration to the default, which appears to be 10 minutes on an otherwise unchanged Mac desktop I tested on.This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Howard.Ask Mac 911Weve compiled a list of the questions we get asked most frequently, along with answers and links to columns:read our super FAQto see if your question is covered. If not, were always looking for new problems to solve! Email yours tomac911@macworld.com, including screen captures as appropriate and whether you want your full name used. Not every question will be answered; we dont reply to emails, and we cannot provide direct troubleshooting advice.

Apple hasvehemently deniedthat it ever abused recordings of Siri requests by using those records for marketing, ad sales, or any of the other creepy nonsense were being forced to tolerate with other connected devices.The companys denial follows a recent $95 million settlement concerning a widely reported sequence of events when it became known that the company hadhuman contractors grading peoples spoken Siri requests. Many of us were extremely shocked at the nature what was being recorded and shared with those contractors, and to be fair, Appleswiftly took steps to remedy the situation, which it said was necessary to improve Siris accuracy.The plaintiffs claimed that Apples systems had been used to trigger ads targeted at them, which Apple denied despite having settled the case. Its thought the company chose to settle because it wanted to prevent further accusations against itscommitments to privacy.An unforced error with big consequencesThe company has always denied that it abused the Siri request records in any way and has constantly pointed out that the recordings were not directly connected to any individual user, which is very unlike the experience you get with other connected devices.That denial wasnt enough in this case.Thats because devices that lack Apples commitment to privacy are the ones responsible for ads you might encounter that spookily reflect private conversations you may have had. Apple says its systems dont do that.Some companiesdeny they do this, but the factothers continue to do soleaves most of us deeply uncomfortable, and erodes trust.In a statement following the resolution of the lawsuit,an Apple spokesperson said: Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose. Privacy is a foundational part of the design process, driven by principles that include data minimization, on-device intelligence, transparency and control, and strong security protections that work together to provide users with incredible experiences and peace of mind.Apples track record is a good oneApple has committed vast resources to creating privacy protections across its systems. Everything from Lockdown mode to tools to prevent aggressive ad targeting and device fingerprinting represents the extent of its efforts, work that touches almost every part of the companys ecosystem.A future looming problem, of course, is that while Apple might be keeping to its pro-privacy promise, not every third-party developer likely shares the same commitment, despite the Privacy Labelling scheme the company has in place at the App Store.This might become an even bigger problem as Apple is forced to open up to third-party stores. It seems plausible to expect some popular apps sold via those stores might choose to gather user data for profit.With that monster visible on the horizon, Apple has also confirmed that it has teams working to build new technologies that will enhance Siris privacy. It also said, Apple does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri, and even then, the recordings are used solely for that purpose.How Apple already protects Siri privacyApple pointed to several protections it already has in place for Siri requests:Siri is designed to do as much processing as possible right on a users device though some requests require external help, many, such as search suggestions, do not.Siri searches and requests are not associated with your Apple Account.Apple does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri.Apple has another protection it is putting into place: Private Cloud Compute. This will mean that Apple Intelligence requests made through Siri are directed to Apples cloud servers, which offer industry-leading security. When Siri uses Private Cloud Compute, a users data is not stored or made accessible to Apple, and Private Cloud Compute only uses their data to fulfil the request, the company said.To some degree, the need to make these statements is a problem Apple foolishly created for itself in the way it initially handled Siri request grading. The manner in which that was done tarnished its reputation for privacy, which is unfortunate given the company knows very well that in the current environment digital privacy is something that must be fought for.There is a silver lining to the clouded sky. That Apple is now making these statements means it can once again raise privacy as a consideration as we move through the next chapters of AI-driven digital transformation.All the same, raising the conversation does not in any way guarantee thatprivacy will win the debate, despite howutterly essential it is to business and personal usersin this digital, connected era.You can follow me on social media! Youll find me onBlueSky, LinkedIn,Mastodon, andMeWe.

BDO Unibank has broken ground on a new Manila campus designed by Foster + Partners. The project, comprising two towers, seeks to depart from the typical model of air-conditioned high-rise office towers in the city and draw on vernacular architecture more responsive to the humid tropical climate.Image credit: Foster + PartnersThe campus integrates five separate plots into a single development, featuring two high-rise towers that frame a triple-height public space. The open public area, sheltered from rain and sun, is designed with greenery and artwork, while an elevated reception connects visitors and staff to office towers and key amenities. In addition to workspaces, the development holds a 32,000-square foot meeting and event space and a public museum showcases BDOs art collection.Image credit: Foster + PartnersOutside, regular setbacks in the building mass create triple-storey amenity floors with outdoor terraces. The design also includes an urban rooftop farm, supporting the ...

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Ubisoft has announced another delay to Assassins Creed Shadows. Previously set for February 14th, its now launching on March 20th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC via the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store. This comes in the wake of Ubisofts promise that the open-world action RPG wouldnt be delayed again.Franchise executive producer Marc-Alexis Cote recently said on Twitter, While weve already made remarkable strides, we believe a few additional weeks are needed to implement that feedback and ensure an even more ambitious and engaging day-one experience. While ensuring ongoing dialogue between our players and development teams, Cote said more updates will be coming very soon.Assassins Creed Shadows was first planned to launch on November 15th. While touted as feature complete, the underwhelming performance of Star Wars Outlaws prompted a delay to ensure more polish. Ubisoft also announced a day-one release on Steam, the cancellation of advanced access, and the removal of the Season Pass model. Instead, all pre-orders would receive the first expansion for free.Ubisoft has released in-depth blogs and gameplay snippets outlining different aspects of the title. Head here for combat details or here to learn more about the new parkour features.https://twitter.com/assassinscreed/status/1877400048314528126

With early access finally beginning this week for Hyper Light Breaker, Heart Machine has released a new trailer showcasing the three available characters: Lapis, Vermillion, and Goro. It also reveals the two bosses, Dro and Exus (known as Crowns), that players must tackle to fight the Abyss King. Check it out below.Three smaller teasers showcase each Breakers playstyle. While they utilize different weapons, its the Sycoms that distinguish them. Each provides unique benefits like increased critical hit rate or boosting core stats on upgrading. Otherwise, players are free to customize other aspects of their loadout.As for other early access content, you can look forward to online co-op for up to three players, various weapons and upgrades, skins for each character, and more.Hyper Light Breaker launches on January 14th for PC via Steam Early Access. Before that, Heart Machine will release extensive gameplay footage against each Crown on January 10th to prep fans beforehand. Stay tuned for more details when those go live.

Microsoft has announced that Xbox Developer_Direct will return on January 23rd, 10 AM PST/1 PM EST. It will focus on three titles: id Softwares DOOM: The Dark Ages, Sandfall Interactives Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Compulsion Games South of Midnight.The development teams of each title will provide in-depth looks. While new gameplay seems a given, its possible that there may be release dates. DOOM: The Dark Ages has been rumored for release in May, while South of Midnight is allegedly coming sometime in March.Of course, as it usually does, Microsoft is teasing a fourth reveal, which could be the rumored remake of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Its reportedly developed by Virtuos, with a technical art director at its Shanghai studio recently listing an unannounced Unreal Engine 5 remake.Regardless, all titles are confirmed to launch on Game Pass this year. The length of the presentation is unknown, so stay tuned for updates and further details in the coming weeks.

Jimmy Carter tries to comfort 6-year-old Ruhama Issah at Savelugu Hospital in Ghana as a Carter Center technical assistant dresses Issah's Guinea worm wound. In May 2010, Ghana reported its last case of Guinea worm disease and announced it had stopped transmission a year later. The Carter Center / L. GubbAbout a year after Jimmy Carter left the White House, he founded the Carter Center in 1982, based on a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering. That mission launched him into a post-presidency that was singularly successfulin its efforts to beat back the scourges of humanity, from civil war to disease.One of Carters foremost achievementsnot for me, but for the people that have been afflicted, as he told ABC News George Stephanopoulos in a 2015 interviewwas the near-total eradication ofGuinea worm, a vicious parasite passed on to humans by drinking stagnant, infected water in Africa and Asia.Once youve seen a small child with a two- or three-foot-long live Guinea worm protruding from her body, right through her skin, you never forget it, Carter wrote in a 1990 op-ed for the Washington Post after visiting Ghana with his wife Rosalynn. He described walking through villages and witnessing hundreds of men, women and children in agony.Nobody was doing anything about it, and it was such a spectacularly awful disease, Donald Hopkins, the Carter Centers special advisor for Guinea worm eradication, tells Russ Bynum and Sam Mednick of the Associated Press.In 2015, as he suffered from cancer, the former president quipped to reporters that hed like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do. When Carter died on December 29, 2024, at 100 years old, he had come tantalizingly close to realizing that wish. Now, experts say the parasites eradication is on the horizon.The Carter Center joined the fight against the neglected tropical disease in 1986, when Guinea worms tormented some 3.5 million people across 21 countries in Africa and Asia each year. By 2023, only 14 provisional human cases remained, according to the Centers data. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter asks Ghanaian children outside Savelugu Hospital, "who here has had Guinea worm disease?" The Carter Center / L. GubbThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that symptoms of Guinea worm disease, caused by consuming the parasite Dracunculus medinensis, might not manifest until a year after infection. But at that time, a pregnant female Guinea wormwhich can measure up to three feet in lengthbegins to break through the humans skin and emerge to expel her larvae into a body of water. The process is excruciating for the afflicted human, as the worm slowly pulses out, usually through the legs or feet.Having the worm pulled out is more painful than giving birth, Nyingong Aguek, one of 500 residents of Jarweng, a village in South Sudan, tells the AP. She points to scars from four worms on her left leg.Although the disease is not fatal, it can rip through entire villages via shared water sources in a process that NPRs Jason Beaubien describes as an evil little trick. Just as the worm emerges, it burns and stings the skin, often encouraging the victim to seek relief by plunging their infected extremity into a body of water. Then, it releases the new larvae, which are consumed by tiny crustaceans and transferred to humans when they drink the water. The cycle begins again.Carters deep sympathy for the victims of Guinea worm disease came in part from his background as a peanut farmer who grew up in a farmhouse with no electricity or running water. He understood how a parasite could curse an entire community by crippling farmers for weeks during the planting or harvest seasons, by preventing children from going to school and by keeping mothers from caring for their infants and toddlers, as he wrote in the Washington Post. Guinea worms are thin, thread-like parasites that can grow up to three feet long within the human body, before emerging through the skin. The Carter CenterHumans cannot develop resistance to the worms, according to Scientific Americans Charles Schmidt, and the traditional process of removing them is painstaking: gently winding an emerging worm around a stick and pulling it slowly out, usually just an inch or two each day, in a process that can last for weeks. Pulling too fast or too hard might cause the worm to break off in the body, leading to secondary infections. When victims suffer from multiple wormssuch as Abdullahi Rabiu, a Nigerian man who had a record-setting 84 in his body at one timethe excruciating recovery work compounds.If Guinea worm disease were to be destroyed, it would become only the second human disease (after smallpox) to be eradicated by humans, the only parasitic disease to be eradicated and the only disease to be eradicated without a vaccine or medicine, according to the Carter Center.To think that you could eradicate a disease without any tools is really still just a crazy idea, Julie Jacobson, a global health worker and doctor who helped secure funding for the Carter Centers work, tells ABC News Mary Kekatos. He did it with perseverance and working with people in the grassroots within communities.Since Guinea worm disease doesnt have any vaccines or treatments, the Center, alongside global health agencies and governments of the countries where the disease dwelled, doesnt fight the parasites with the sleek, precise instruments of modern epidemiology. Instead, it works to promote prevention and education. With Carter Center support, Nigeria reported its last case of Guinea worm disease in November 2008 and was certified free of Guinea worm by the WHO in 2013. The Carter CenterThe goal is to break the worms life cycle so it cannot continue infecting humans and reproducing in bodies of water. Workers from the Carter Center provide villages with cloth screens to filter larvae from their water. They construct barriers to isolate contaminated water sources and to keep the infected away from seeking relief in water. Villagers are encouraged to identify and report new cases, sometimes for cash rewards, according to the AP.Although cases of Guinea worm disease recently hit an all-time low, eradication efforts are complicated by the presence of the parasites in stray dogs, according to NPR. Still, the World Health Organization aims to eliminate the disease by 2030, and officials at the Carter Center are confident that the scourge of Guinea worm disease will be over even sooner.I would still like to think we will beat the timeline, Adam Weiss, the director of the Centers eradication program, says of the 2030 goal to the AP. The Carter Center is committed to this, obviously, no matter what.Carter himself asked for updates about his group's efforts, even after he went into hospice care. He was steadfast, caring and committed to his work alleviating human suffering until the very end.The last mile is the hardest, Kashef Ijaz, the Carter Centers vice president for health programs, tells Scientific American. We have to stay committed and remain more focused than ever before.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Africa, American Presidents, Disease, Disease and Illnesses, Health, James Carter, Mollusks, Worms, Sponges, Starfish, South Asia, Sudan, Water

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn MoreDiffbot, a small Silicon Valley company best known for maintaining one of the worlds largest indexes of web knowledge, announced today the release of a new AI model that promises to address one of the biggest challenges in the field: factual accuracy.The new model, a fine-tuned version of Metas LLama 3.3, is the first open-source implementation of a system known as graph retrieval-augmented generation, or GraphRAG.Unlike conventional AI models, which rely solely on vast amounts of preloaded training data, Diffbots LLM draws on real-time information from the companys KnowledgeGraph, a constantly updated database containing more than a trillion interconnected facts.We have a thesis: that eventually general-purpose reasoning will get distilled down into about 1 billion parameters, said Mike Tung, Diffbots founder and CEO, in an interview with VentureBeat. You dont actually want the knowledge in the model. You want the model to be good at just using tools so that it can query knowledge externally.How it worksDiffbots Knowledge Graph is a sprawling, automated database that has been crawling the public web since 2016. It categorizes web pages into entities such as people, companies, products and articles, extracting structured information using a combination of computer vision and natural language processing.Every four to five days, the Knowledge Graph is refreshed with millions of new facts, ensuring it remains up-to-date. Diffbots AImodel leverages this resource by querying the graph in real time to retrieve information, rather than relying on static knowledge encoded in its training data.For example, when asked about a recent news event, the model can search the web for the latest updates, extract relevant facts, and cite the original sources. This process is designed to make the system more accurate and transparent than traditional LLMs.Imagine asking an AI about the weather, Tung said. Instead of generating an answer based on outdated training data, our model queries a live weather service and provides a response grounded in real-time information.How Diffbots Knowledge Graph beats traditional AI at finding factsIn benchmark tests, Diffbots approach appears to be paying off. The company reports its model achieves an 81% accuracy score on FreshQA, a Google-created benchmark for testing real-time factual knowledge, surpassing both ChatGPT and Gemini. It also scored 70.36% on MMLU-Pro, a more difficult version of a standard test of academic knowledge.Perhaps most significantly, Diffbot is making its model fully open-source, allowing companies to run it on their own hardware and customize it for their needs. This addresses growing concerns about data privacy and vendor lock-in with major AI providers.You can run it locally on your machine, Tung noted. Theres no way you can run Google Gemini without sending your data over to Google and shipping it outside of your premises.Open-source AI could transform how enterprises handle sensitive dataThe release comes at a pivotal moment in AI development. Recent months have seen mounting criticism of large language models tendency to hallucinate or generate false information, even as companies continue to scale up model sizes. Diffbots approach suggests an alternative path forward, one focused on grounding AI systems in verifiable facts rather than attempting to encode all human knowledge in neural networks.Not everyones going after just bigger and bigger models, Tung said. You can have a model that has more capability than a big model with kind of a non-intuitive approach like ours.Industry experts note that Diffbots Knowledge Graph-based approach could be particularly valuable for enterprise applications where accuracy and auditability are crucial. The company already provides data services to major firms including Cisco, DuckDuckGo and Snapchat.The model is available immediately through an open-source release on GitHub and can be tested through a public demo at diffy.chat. For organizations wanting to deploy it internally, Diffbot says the smaller 8-billion-parameter version can run on a single Nvidia A100 GPU, while the full 70-billion-parameter version requires two H100 GPUs.Looking ahead, Tung believes the future of AI lies not in ever-larger models, but in better ways of organizing and accessing human knowledge: Facts get stale. A lot of these facts will be moved out into explicit places where you can actually modify the knowledge and where you can have data provenance.As the AI industry grapples with challenges around factual accuracy and transparency, Diffbots release offers a compelling alternative to the dominant bigger-is-better paradigm. Whether it succeeds in shifting the fields direction remains to be seen, but it has certainly demonstrated that when it comes to AI, size isnt everything.Daily insights on business use cases with VB DailyIf you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI.Read our Privacy PolicyThanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here.An error occured.