Month: August 2020

Enlarge / Artist's impression of low-Earth orbit satellites like those launched by SpaceX and OneWeb. (credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld)

Broadband satellites being launched by SpaceX and other companies will inevitably have a negative impact on astronomers' ability to observe the night sky, according to a new report by astronomers. There are no mitigation strategies that can completely eliminate the satellites' impact on astronomical observations—other than not launching satellites at all—but the report includes recommendations for how satellite operators can minimize disruption and how observatories can adjust to the changes.

The report released this week is titled, "Impact of Satellite Constellations on Optical Astronomy and Recommendations Toward Mitigations." The report resulted from the recent Satellite Constellations 1 (SATCON1) workshop, which was organized jointly by the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab and the American Astronomical Society (AAS). SpaceX engineers participated in the online workshop, but the report was written by members of the SATCON1 Scientific Organizing Committee and represents their consensus views. The committee members hail from NOIRLab, AAS, the Lowell and Steward observatories in Arizona, the Rubin Observatory in Chile, the University of Michigan, UC-Davis, Smith College, and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).

The report said:

Enlarge / A nurse practitioner administers COVID-19 tests in the parking lot at Brockton High School in Brockton, MA under a tent during the coronavirus pandemic on Aug. 13, 2020. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)

A 25-year-old resident of Reno, Nevada was infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, two times, about 48-days apart, with the second infection causing a more severe case of COVID-19 than the first and requiring hospitalization and oxygen support.

That’s according to a draft study, led by researchers at the University of Nevada and posted online. The study has not been published by a scientific journal and has not been peer-reviewed. Still, it drew quick attention from researchers, who have been examining data from the first confirmed case of a SARS-CoV-2 reinfection, reported earlier this week.

Reinfections with SARS-CoV-2 are not surprising—or even necessarily concerning. From person to person, immune responses to an infection develop along a spectrum, with some people mounting robust, protective responses and others being left with weaker responses. Amid the more than 24.5 million cases worldwide, it is completely expected to find some recovered patients who are not completely protected by their immune responses and are thus vulnerable to reinfection.

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  Xiaomi's under-display camera, which you can just make out in the top left. [credit: Xaiomi ]

Front-facing cameras have been the bane of smartphone design for the past few years. As screens get bigger and bigger and bezels get smaller and smaller, there ends up being nowhere to put a front camera that doesn't interfere with the display. Manufacturers have mostly settled on clunky solutions that involve making the display as big as possible and just cutting out whatever chunks you need to support the front camera. This started as a notch-shaped cutout, and companies have lately worked that down to a single circle that looks like someone took a hole punch tool to the display.

The holy grail of front camera design is the under-display front camera. Why worry about the camera placement at all when you can just shove it behind the display? Manufacturers have been floating this idea in public since at least last year, with Xiaomi leading the charge. Today, the company is back with video footage of what it's calling its "third-generation" under-display camera technology, even though generations 1 and 2 never came to market.

With the caveat that this is highly-biased promotional material, Xaiomi's new camera looks darn near invisible in all but one shot of the video. In the worst shot, which we captured above, the display looks darker than normal over top of the camera area. An under-display camera needs to see through the spaces between the pixels, and that involves thinning out the display somewhat. Xiaomi's graphic shows that early prototypes would remove 75 percent of the pixels above the camera, but the latest "third-generation" technique keeps the full display resolution and uses smaller pixels above the camera, basically just increasing the dot pitch.

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  Fig. 1: The available lead time for launch details on the PS5 and Xbox Series X is already way below average.

As August transitions into September, both Sony and Microsoft continue their marketing push for new high-end game consoles promised by the end of the year. But with just 90 days to go until Thanksgiving, the public at large is still waiting on both companies to reveal important details about the price and specific launch dates for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

While this situation isn't unprecedented in recent history, it is unusual. And if we don't get public price and launch date announcements by the end of September, we'd be in largely uncharted territory for modern console releases.

An above-average wait

As shown in the figures above and the chart below, console makers have usually given the public more warning of their launch plans than they're set to this year. In the 12 console launches since 2000, the all-important price and release date announcements have come an average of 128 days before the actual console launch, or a median of about 153 days (for the North American launch).

Enlarge / Artist's impression of working from home, three seconds before 10,000 important documents are deleted from your laptop. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty )

Welcome to the fifth installment of our Future of Business series. Over the last few weeks, we've talked about home office ergonomics, the challenges of collaborating with remote colleagues, work strategies, and the inevitable return to the office. We've also asked Ars readers to weigh in on what has been working for them as they work remotely.

We’ve left the most vital issue until now: what’s needed to embrace remote work in your company for the long haul. COVID-19 may have ushered in remote work for millions on a temporary basis, but what does remote work look like as a permanent feature of companies large and small? Our grand, improvised remote work experiment has taught us so much, there's simply no better time than now to adapt your business processes and culture to this new opportunity. Yes, it is an opportunity. But only if done well, and that means providing the appropriate resources for remote workers, as well as changing company culture from top to bottom.

We not only think this is an opportunity but an inevitable necessity. For every business with leaders whose heads are stuck in the if-I-can't-see-you-you-ain't-working past, there will be forward-looking competitors who are changing now—and who will be willing to snap up your employees when backward policies drive them to quit. They’ll also be saving money and enjoying greater access to exceptional talent, as well.