Month: January 2021

There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: experiments in synchronization in a network of violin players demonstrated that humans can drown out distractions and miscommunications, the better to stay in sync.

An unusual experiment involving 16 violinists trying to synchronize their playing while wearing noise-canceling headphones yielded some intriguing results, according to an August 2020 paper published in Nature Communications. The study concluded that human networks are fundamentally different from other networks in terms of synchronized behavior because of our decision-making ability. That could lead to better models for complex human behavior, with applications in such diverse areas as economics, epidemiology, politics, traffic management, and the spread of misinformation.

There have been prior studies of synchronization in human behavior, most notably with regard to bridge dynamics. For instance, as we've reported previously, people walking on a bridge that starts to shift will instinctively adjust their stride to match the bridge's swaying motion as it lurches sideways. This will be familiar to anyone who has tried to walk on a fast-moving train and needed to find steady footing as the train wobbled from side to side. But a bridge exacerbates the problem, giving rise to additional small sideways oscillations that amplify the swaying. The result is a positive feedback loop (the technical term is "synchronous lateral excitation").

(credit: Pixy)

Ticketmaster has agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine after admitting its employees repeatedly used stolen passwords and other means to hack a rival ticket sales company.

The fine, which is part of a deferred prosecution agreement Ticketmaster entered with federal prosecutors, resolves criminal charges filed last week in federal court in the eastern district of New York. Charges include violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, computer intrusion for commercial advantage or private financial gain, computer intrusion in furtherance of fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud.

In the settlement, Ticketmaster admitted that an employee who used to work for a rival company emailed the login credentials for multiple accounts the rival used to manage presale ticket sales. At a San Francisco meeting attended by at least 14 employees of Ticketmaster or its parent company Live Nation, the employee used one set of credentials to log in to an account to demonstrate how it worked.

Enlarge / Vials of undiluted Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are prepared to administer to staff and residents at the Goodwin House Bailey's Crossroads, a senior living community in Falls Church, Virginia, on December 30, 2020. (credit: Getty | BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI )

With the pandemic continuing to surge to new heights, debate has erupted among experts about how to get the most protection as quickly as possible from the limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines currently available.

Suggestions floated so far include delaying the second of a two-dose regimen for maybe three to four months rather than doling them out in the planned three-to-four-week intervals evaluated in large clinical trials. With this change, more people can get a first dose now, offering ­some protection. Another possibility is simply cutting doses by half, which would immediately double the number of people who can be vaccinated now. And regulators in the United Kingdom have introduced the idea of mixing regimens—with some people getting their first dose of a vaccine by one manufacturer and then getting a second dose of vaccine from a different manufacturer based on availability at the time.

Evidence supporting these suggested tweaks in the vaccine rollout are shaky at best. But some experts argue that the dire state of the pandemic warrants a new, perhaps riskier approach.

Enlarge / Supporters of Julian Assange protest in front of the US Embassy in Rome, Italy on September 7, 2020. (credit: Getty Images | Stefano Montesi - Corbis)

A British judge today rejected the US' request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying that Assange would be at greater risk of suicide in the American prison system.

"I am satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange's mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit suicide with the 'single minded determination' of his autism spectrum disorder. I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America," District Judge Vanessa Baraitser wrote in the ruling.

While Assange had "no episodes of self-harming behaviour or suicide attempts during his period of imprisonment at Belmarsh," a prison in London, Baraitser wrote that Assange's mental health would deteriorate "if he is subjected to the extreme conditions of SAMs," the "special administrative measures" used by the US to protect national security information. Baraitser wrote:

Enlarge / This screenshot of the Photos and Calculator apps comes from a video Microsoft product chief Panos Panay dropped on Instagram to demonstrate new UI concepts in March 2020. (credit: Microsoft)

We've been hearing rumors for a while now about a significant visual refresh planned for Windows 10 in 2021 under the codename "Sun Valley." Those rumors gained some extra steam this morning, when Windows Latest reporter Mayank Parmar spotted a Microsoft job posting made in October that offered prospective senior software engineer hires an opportunity to "deliver a sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows experiences to signal [that] Windows is BACK."

Shortly after Parmar published a report on the listing, Microsoft edited it to remove the interesting bits—it now reads like a standard software engineer job listing, offering the opportunity to "build delightful, polished experiences for Windows" without saying anything about changes coming to Windows.

What we know about Sun Valley so far

Sun Valley is rumored to be a major UI code overhaul expected to land in Windows 10 21H2—the build that will drop in the second half of 2021. To be clear, the "rumored" part means exactly what it says—so far, it's rumors only, with multiple sources but no confirmation from Microsoft.

Enlarge (credit: Samsung)

Samsung has officially announced its next big product launch event, "Galaxy Unpacked 2021." This show will unveil the Galaxy S21 and will be broadcast live on Samsung.com on January 14, 2021 at 10am ET. Typically, the Galaxy S announcement is in February, so this is earlier than ever for Samsung. January 14 is also the last day of this year's all-digital CES.

If you needed confirmation that the leaks were on the right track, Samsung's teaser image above confirms the rumored S21 camera bump design, which is shown disembodied and stored in a glass box. The new camera bump is the big design change this year—Samsung's camera solution has a new wrap-around design and is integrated into the corner of the phone. This sounds a bit scary for drop survivability, but the official renders seem to show a seam along the edge of the phone, hopefully indicating that the camera glass doesn't actually wrap around the sides of the phone. It certainly looks distinctive.

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  Leaked official images of the Galaxy S21 Ultra, from Evan Blass. [credit: Evan Blass ]

We know most of what we'll be getting with the Galaxy S21. The S21 will be the US' first phone with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC (the world's first Snapdragon 888 phone, the Xiaomi Mi 11, has already been announced for China, and some territories will get an S21 with a Samsung Exynos chip). The 888 will bring an ARM Cortex-X1 design to market, integrate a 5G modem into the main SoC design, and, for select ultra-premium phones, will include Wi-Fi 6E.