TASK DEFINITION: Given a document, find the main entity about whom the author is writing. Write the full name if mentioned in the text. Note that URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
PROBLEM: * * * France isn’t the first killjoy to quit the smartphone party. In 2015  the Canadian artist Garnet Hertz invented a cheeky device called “Phonesafe ” a masochistic lockbox designed to incarcerate smartphones for a set period of time. Hertz meant Phonesafe as a provocation  but the same idea quickly became a product. Today  you can buy similar  but mass-produced  containers on Amazon  and multi-phone lockers have become a mainstay in corporate offices and schools around the world. A McDonald’s in Singapore has even installed a locker designed to promote “family togetherness” and face-to-face conversation. If you attend a Guns n’ Roses concert or a comedy performance by Dave Chappelle  ushers will require you to lock your device in a neoprene pouch and take it into the show in that state.  The phone-locking pouch  made by a San Francisco company called Yondr   has a wide opening at the short end for inserting a smartphone. A magnetic locking mechanism  similar to those on anti-theft tags in retail stores  engages to hold it closed. After the show  this clasp is swiped across a counter-magnet  which releases the lock.  Yondr  is a surefire way to cut down on bootleg YouTube videos. In Wired  Alice Gregory recently took a tough look at the device. Gregory recounts her experience at a Chris Rock performance  where audience members waiting in the lobby had to forgo smartphone usage. The affair reduced them to “a roomful of jonesing fiends ” as she puts it. Ultimately  Gregory connects  Yondr  to a thorny question about civil liberties: the right of the people to keep and bear smartphones.
It’s an ironic conclusion  because  Yondr  is sold as a tool to provide freedom  rather than to take it away. To “Be Here Now ” as the company’s tagline puts it. It’s a promise to deliver presence—a tricky calling  to say the least. Presence has a long history in religion and philosophy  from Buddhist practices to the metaphysics of the 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger. Today  presence is most common in the various mindfulness trends that have overtaken individual and corporate life  in Silicon Valley in particular—collectively the critic R. John Williams has called them “technê-zen.” Cutting through the history and the rhetoric  it’s productive to think about presence in terms of attention. You’re present where you focus your attention—and you only have so much attention to pay. In the case of Chris Rock  he wants attention directed toward him  live on stage. Rock’s show might involve awkward improvisation or new material that he doesn't want circulated online. Teachers are less concerned about copyright than comedians are  but they still demand attention. I have tested Yondr’s effects on mind-wandering in classroom experiments with Dan Smilek of the University of Waterloo Vision and Attention Lab. Our research is based in part on the assumption that instructors want students to focus on the course materials  and not on Instagram  Facebook  or other distractions.  Yondr  can be a remarkably effective tool for enforcing digital abstinence in these contexts  thanks primarily to  its  portability. Rather than locking away devices inside lockers  or even inside a disused Catholic tabernacle  as I have done in a performance piece   Yondr  buffers the anxiety of being isolated from your device.
Given that the mere presence of one’s smartphone can reduce cognitive capacity   Yondr  offers a way to surf between the waves of a device’s presence and absence. You can hold it  but you can’t use it. This might be an especially important balance in classroom situations  where students see a teacher’s “phone shoebox” as an unwelcome imposition of authority. * * * Needless to say   Yondr  is still an imposition. And controlling attention requires more than just locking a device in a binge-breaking neoprene pouch. Joelle Renstrom has reported the results of her own  Yondr  experiment in a class at Boston University  where she had her 30 students lock away their devices over the course of a semester. At first  37 percent of the students found the policy annoying  but by the end of the term that figure had dropped to 14 percent. Those are promising  if tentative  results  but Renstrom’s anecdotal comments about the experiment may be more instructive than the data she collected. Renstrom describes her students’ initial experience of Yondr as “akin to caging a pet  a clear denial of freedom.” Moreover  she observes that some students left their cases unlocked as a sign of rebellion  even though they didn’t remove the phones from them. Rather than becoming “active resistors to technology ” as the scholars Christine Satchell and Paul Dourish call people who choose to ignore their devices   Yondr  users are ultimately the victims of technological disenfranchisement. When implemented as a mandatory smartphone prophylactic   Yondr  becomes a means of control  not of choice  let alone of presence.
Such top-down tactics might be enforced easily at live performances  as one of my research assistants observed firsthand at a Chris Rock show in Niagara Falls. However  as a daily ritual for high-school students  all-or-nothing digital abstinence enforced by an authority figure seems destined to backfire  possibly leading to rejection—or even worse  a legal complaint. In an attempt to tackle this disciplinary problem  I have been offering workshops to schoolteachers that riff on and revise the design Yondr originated. In the workshops  I provide a kit that allows students to make their own digital abstinence case  but with an obnoxiously loud Velcro enclosure rather than a silent  magnetic clasp. This semipermeable design—the Resistor Case  I call it—is intended to promote self-regulation  not authoritarian control. The Velcro acts as a gateway to conscience: It provides just enough resistance and noise to make its owner think twice before opening it. Michael I. Norton  Daniel Mochon  and Dan Ariely coined the “IKEA effect” to name the increase in value people assign to self-made products. With the Resistor Case  I’m counting on a similar effect  that students who fist construct and then choose to make use of their DIY phone lockers might be more compelled to use them. Of course  the kit will only work if the teacher provides a context for it that includes a discussion of responsible smartphone use. (The kit provides a series of cards to prompt this conversation.)

SOLUTION: Yondr

PROBLEM: Washington (CNN)  Sen. Lindsey Graham  R-South Carolina   warned against a potential conflict with North Korea "if things don't change."
"If we have to go to war to stop this  we will "  Graham  told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. "If there's a war with North Korea it will be because North Korea brought it on itself  and we're headed to a war if things don't change."
 Graham 's comments on CNN's "The Situation Room" come amid rising tension between the US and North Korea  and on Tuesday  the Pentagon confirmed that North Korea had launched what the US military believes to be an intercontinental ballistic missile.
 Graham  clarified that  he  doesn't think war would be the best outcome but said the US won't let Kim Jong Un have the ability to strike America's mainland.

SOLUTION: Graham

PROBLEM: It’s all smiles for  LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers  after  their  roster makeover at the NBA’s trade deadline. (Adam Glanzman/Getty)
The decision to trade Kyrie Irving to the Celtics was the obvious thing people pointed to in talking about Cleveland’s offseason overhaul when this regular season began in October. But the larger issue for the Cavaliers wasn’t the departure of Irving (though it obviously hurt). It was Cleveland deciding to go away from the very thing that made the Cavaliers into the team that dominated the Eastern Conference over the past three years and won a championship in 2016: Surrounding  LeBron James  with shooters  giving  him  the ball and letting  him  go to work.
3.  LeBron James  is happy again
It only took watching the Cavaliers for a few minutes in January to see that  James  was miserable.  His  stats were down across the board  the team was getting drilled repeatedly  and  his  frustration with the whole situation was clear — to say nothing of the very obvious off-court chemistry issues that were repeatedly bubbling to the surface.
That was what made  James ’s performance — and  his  attitude — Sunday against the Celtics so striking.  He  was flying off the bench to celebrate the performances of  his  teammates — most notably on some late three-pointers by Jordan Clarkson to put the game out of reach.  He  followed up recording triple-doubles in  his  previous two games with 24 points  eight rebounds and 10 assists in 28 minutes as Cleveland won handily and allowed  him  to rest in the fourth quarter.
And when asked about  his  new teammates after the game on ABC’s telecast   he  was effusive in what they can bring to  his  team.
That’s just slightly different than the mood  James  had about  his  teammates a few days ago — and that  his  teammates had about  him . For as much as Cleveland needed to change its mix on the court  it needed to change it off the court as well. In doing so  the Cavaliers have gotten  James  back to being happy and motivated again — and succeeding in that gives Cleveland a bigger win than any other team in the NBA at the deadline.
While the Cavaliers now have a roster and rotation that makes sense in the context of what works best for  James   the moves they made also gave this team a desperately needed shot in the arm of youth and athleticism.

SOLUTION:
LeBron James