Adventures in folding. Here’s a conundrum for you. A few months ago, Samsung unveiled their first folding-screen smartphone: The Samsung Galaxy Fold. It features not one, but two screens. A small 4.6-inch one on the front and a huge, 7.3-inch, tablet-sized one that unfolds on the inside. Finally, after weeks of waiting, I got my hands on one. Granted, it was only for a couple of hours and, while I liked it more than I thought I would, I still had many questions about performance and utility. Between the time I handed in my first impression story to my Medium editors and the moment they posted it, almost a half dozen stories appeared about early Galaxy Fold units failing in pretty spectacular fashion. The screens glitched and broke and did other bizarre things. I wasn’t particularly careful with my device, but again, I didn’t have a few days to test it. Also, to be fair to Samsung, some reviewers peeled a permanent protective layer off the flexible screen. So, read my analysis of the Galaxy Fold to learn what it might be like to own one (if you can afford it), but keep in mind that Samsung’s foldable device may have a pretty bumpy ride to market (if and when it makes it).

Russia played us. We now have the clearest picture yet of just how Russian trolls used social media to manipulate American sentiment and, perhaps, change the course the 2016 Presidential Election. I’m not suggesting you read the massive 400-plus-page Mueller Report (though you might want to); others have done that for you. This Buzzfeed report details how Russia’s Internet Research Agency started creating fake Facebook accounts as early as 2014 and eventually spread their efforts to all major social media platforms. They created fake outrage about already divisive issues, whipping unsuspecting social media users into a frenzy. Their fake social media work was so effective, that some of it even got picked up by the media as representations of real, American, social media users.

Pivoting. Two companies I’ve tracked closely for more than a decade are making significant market pivots that could impact how they interact with customers and customer privacy in the future. Facebook is promising to prioritize user privacy across its entire platform, while Apple, which has a stellar privacy record, is diving deep into the service space, a move that’s likely to put stress on its ability to maintain total control over user data. In my latest The Upgrade column, I look at what some of those changes mean for Facebook, Apple and you.

BTW: Facebook is also working on its own “Alexa.”

Mush. One robot dog can run, jump, and maybe open doors, but if you pull together a team of Boston Robotics SpotMini robots, they can pull a Mack truck.

P.S. So random.

Programming Note: We’re entering a holiday season, so LanceList is going to take a little break. There’ll be no Monday edition, but I’ll be back on Wednesday April 24. Enjoy your holidays!

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Podcast Update: 33 Million Miles to Mars is on hiatus. Let me know if you want to help me revive it! You can listen to past episodes here.