From a report: Calculate Linux 20, a Gentoo-based operating system, is ready to be installed on your computer. Calculate Linux 20 is based on Gentoo 17.1 and comes with several desktop environment choices, such as Cinnamon, KDE, Xfce, MATE, and more. Unfortunately for some users, the operating system is now 64-bit only. Yes, with version 20, the developers have chosen to kill the 32-bit variants. While some people will be upset, it is definitely the correct choice -- 32-bit only processors are very old at this point. You can likely get a better 64-bit machine for a steal at a thrift store these days.

If you want to sign up for Facebook Messenger, you can no longer escape Big Blue -- you'll need an account from now on. From a report: The company has stopped allowing new users to join using a phone number. "We found that the vast majority of people who use Messenger already log in through Facebook and we want to simplify the process," a spokesperson told VentureBeat. "If you already use Messenger without a Facebook account, no need to do anything." Facebook has said that Messenger has over 1.3 billion users. The company spun messaging out of its main app in order to create Messenger, and in 2015 began allowing users to join without a Facebook account. The app has slowly begun featuring advertising, and businesses can provide customer service through Messenger as well.

Michael Irving, writing for New Atlas: Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet. This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can "communicate" over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no matter how much space separates the two of them. In essence, information is being teleported between them.

Hypothetically, there's no limit to the distance over which quantum teleportation can operate -- and that raises some strange implications that puzzled even Einstein himself. Our current understanding of physics says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and yet, with quantum teleportation, information appears to break that speed limit. Einstein dubbed it "spooky action at a distance." Harnessing this phenomenon could clearly be beneficial, and the new study helps bring that closer to reality. The team generated pairs of entangled photons on the chips, and then made a quantum measurement of one. This observation changes the state of the photon, and those changes are then instantly applied to the partner photon in the other chip.

dryriver writes: The 2010s were not necessarily the greatest decade to live through. AAA computer games were not only DRM'd and internet tethered to death but became increasingly formulaic and pay-to-win driven, and poor quality console ports pissed off PC gamers. Forced software subscriptions for major software products you could previously buy became a thing. Personal privacy went out the window in ways too numerous to list, with lawmakers failing on many levels to regulate the tech, data-mining and internet advertising companies in any meaningful way. Severe security vulnerabilities were found in hundreds of different tech products, from Intel CPUs to baby monitors and internet-connected doorbells. Thousands of tech products shipped with microphones, cameras, and internet connectivity integration that couldn't be switched off with an actual hardware switch. Many electronics products became harder or impossible to repair yourself. Printed manuals coming with tech products became almost non-existent. Hackers, scammers, ransomwarers and identity thieves caused more mayhem than ever before. Troll farms, click farms and fake news factories damaged the integrity of the internet as an information source. Tech companies and media companies became afraid of pissing off the Chinese government.

Windows turned into a big piece of spyware. Intel couldn't be bothered to innovate until AMD Ryzen came along. Nvidia somehow took a full decade to make really basic realtime raytracing happen, even though smaller GPU maker Imagination had done it years earlier with a fraction of the budget, and in a mobile GPU to boot. Top-of-the-line smartphones became seriously expensive. Censorship and shadow banning on the once-more-open internet became a thing. Easily-triggered people trying to muzzle other people on social media became a thing. The quality of popular music and music videos went steadily downhill. Star Wars went to shit after Disney bought it, as did the Star Trek films. And mainstream cinema turned into an endless VFX-heavy comic book movies, remakes/reboots and horror movies fest. In many ways, television was the biggest winner of the 2010s, with many new TV shows with film-like production values being made. The second winner may be computer hardware that delivered more storage/memory/performance per dollar than ever before.

To the question: What, dear Slashdotters, will the 2020s bring us? Will things get better in tech and other things relevant to nerds, or will they get worse?

A reader shares a report from Stuff.co.nz: Christchurch electrician Tim Fensom has been awarded $23,200 after he was fired for refusing to use a face scanning system. Fensom worked for construction company KME Services for eight months as a lead electrician during the construction of Christchurch's new hospital before he was fired on October 30, 2018, the Employment Relations Authority said in its determination. KME managing director Tim Lane replaced the company's paper-based timesheets with a biometric system that scanned workers' faces when they arrived and left the hospital construction site after two other subcontracting companies started using it. When Fensom raised concerns, he was told to use the system or receive a warning for breaching KME's health and safety policy.
[...]
Fensom was on a two week holiday while the system was being rolled out. When he returned on October 29, Fensom declined to use the face scanner, and instead signed in on a paper timesheet and carried on with his day. That day Fensom was given a formal warning letter for not following KME's health and safety policies. The next day when he refused again, Fensom was fired for serious misconduct. The ERA said KME failed to consult its employees about alternatives to paper-based timesheets before switching to the face-scanning software. KME was ordered to pay Fensom $12,000 as compensation for humiliation and injury to feelings and $11,286 in lost wages.

Google has decided to remove hundreds of bitcoin and cryptocurrency videos from YouTube in what's being called a "crypto-purge" -- leaving many who make bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related videos feeling unfairly targeted by the search giant. A YouTube spokesperson said the video-sharing platform has since reinstated the purged videos, however some content creators claim their deleted videos remain inaccessible. Forbes reports: The YouTube crypto-purge appears to only be targeting smaller channels and publishers, with crypto-related videos from the likes of bitcoin and crypto news outlet CoinTelegraph and U.S. business news publisher CNBC escaping the cull. One YouTuber Chris Dunn, who has some 210,000 subscribers on the platform, asked YouTube for an explanation via Twitter. "YouTube just removed most of my crypto videos citing 'harmful or dangerous content' and 'sale of regulated goods,'" Dunn wrote, adding he's been making videos on the platform for 10 years and built up 200,000 subs and 7 million views.

Meanwhile, others have been searching for a reason for the purge, finding YouTube's citing of "harmful and dangerous content" unsatisfactory. "So far Alphabet [Google's parent company] has made no attempt to explain the reasons for the culling," Mati Greenspan, the founder of research group Quantum Economics, wrote in a note. "The first instinct that many had was that perhaps they're trying to protect the consumer from scams. However, this wouldn't make much sense given that Google and Facebook have already had a crypto advertising ban last year that has long since been reversed, likely due to regulatory clarity in the U.S. where it was found that bitcoin and ethereum are neither securities nor scams." A YouTube spokesperson told CoinDesk that YouTube made "the wrong call."

"With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it's brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it. We also offer uploaders the ability to appeal removals and we will re-review the content," the spokesperson said. The spokesperson further stated that YouTube has not changed any policies related to cryptocurrency videos.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to introduce [a $21 million plug-in station] in Red Hook several years ago in an effort to eliminate 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide, 25 tons of nitrous oxide and tons of hazardous particulate matter spewed out each year by cruise ships idling off Brooklyn's coast. [A recent survey found that asthma rates in Red Hook were almost twice as high as the citywide average. Also, Vanadium, a toxic metal in marine fuel that can cause lung damage, was found near cruise terminals in Brooklyn and Manhattan.] When not using shore power, a single cruise ship docked for one day can emit as much diesel exhaust as 34,400 idling tractor-trailers, according to an independent analysis verified by the Environmental Protection Agency. When a ship is plugged in, the agency said, its exhaust is nearly eliminated. But the system has hardly been used after going into operation in 2016. And New York City is expected to announce design plans next year that would expand and modernize terminals in Brooklyn and Manhattan to accommodate the world's largest cruise ships, and more of them. Yet there is no plan to further expand the shore power system.

Neighborhood residents, led by Mr. Armstrong, are sounding the alarm. They want the pollution controls that were promised by the Bloomberg administration. They fault the city and state for failing to force the matter, and the cruise line companies for failing to use the system. Carnival Cruise, which owns the three big ships that dock regularly in Brooklyn, including the Queen Mary 2, agrees that the issue is important. [...] Figuring out why Brooklyn's shore-power system hasn't eliminated cruise ship pollution has become a guessing game involving various government agencies, activists and the cruise lines themselves. One thing is certain: Cruise ships in New York don't have to plug in if they don't want to. The reason why many ships don't plug in is because they aren't required to. "California, unlike New York, has made plugging in mandatory," the report says. "Under a strict 2007 diesel-emissions law, the state requires that 70 percent of visiting ships -- including container and refrigerated cargo vessels -- connect to shore power."

"In Brooklyn, while other cruise ships are welcome to use the plug-in system, the Queen Mary is the only one that can easily access shore power because the electrical sockets on other ships do not line up with the shore-power crane, according to a development corporation spokesman."

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has vetoed a bill that would have made electric scooters and bikes legal in the state, citing the lack of a mandatory helmet requirement and other safety concerns. The veto means e-bikes and e-scooters will continue to remain technically illegal across the state, and will further delay any adoption of popular (if polarizing) shared mobility services like Lime or Bird. The Verge reports: The bill to legalize e-bikes and e-scooters was passed in June with overwhelming support, clearing the state Senate by a 56-6 margin and the state Assembly by a 137-4 margin. But state lawmakers reportedly waited to send the bill to Cuomo until this week out of concern that he would try to stand in the way of the proposal. Cuomo has voiced support for legalizing e-bikes and e-scooters in the past, but reportedly soured on the bill after he was criticized by one of its co-sponsors earlier this year.

While the bill would have broadly legalized both modes of transportation across the state, it was also designed to give cities control over e-bike and e-scooter sharing services. Cities would have been allowed to use permits as a tool to control the influx of these sharing companies, which would help prevent them from being inundated like some other cities around the world. It also would have given these local governments leverage to help negotiate their own regulations around shared e-scooters and e-bikes. Crucially, the bill would have helped take pressure off food delivery workers in New York City, many of whom use e-bikes to get around despite technically being illegal. Instead, those workers will continue to be subjected to $500 fines, confiscations, and occasional NYPD enforcement sweeps that at best feel like dog-and-pony shows and at worst unfairly target these workers.

Mazda says "incorrect programming" in its Smart Braking System (SBS) can make fourth-generation Mazda 3 vehicles falsely detect on object in their path while driving and automatically apply the brakes while driving. "The problem affects 35,390 2019 and 2020 model year cars in the U.S., but Mazda says it is not aware of any injuries or deaths as a result of the defect," reports Engadget. From the report: If the issue occurs, the driver will notice because their car has suddenly stopped, and also as an alarm sounds and a message is displayed on the in-car warning screen. Some Reddit posters report experiencing situations of the system activating while driving with nothing around, and note that while the system can be disabled, it appears to re-enable itself every time the car starts.

Autoblog reports that while some vehicles will simply need to have the system updated or reprogrammed, certain cars with early build dates might need to have their entire instrument cluster replaced or reprogrammed. It's a scary issue, but we've seen Mazda update its cars software to deal with real-life bugs, and the newly-redesigned Mazda3 has already seen a recall to make sure its wheels don't fall off.

Baidu, China's closest equivalent to Google, has achieved the highest score at the General Language Understanding Evaluation (GLUE) AI competition. What's notable about Baidu's achievement is that it illustrates how AI research benefits from a diversity of contributors. MIT Technology Review explains: GLUE is a widely accepted benchmark for how well an AI system understands human language. It consists of nine different tests for things like picking out the names of people and organizations in a sentence and figuring out what a pronoun like "it" refers to when there are multiple potential antecedents. A language model that scores highly on GLUE, therefore, can handle diverse reading comprehension tasks. Out of a full score of 100, the average person scores around 87 points. Baidu is now the first team to surpass 90 with its model, ERNIE.

Baidu's researchers had to develop a technique specifically for the Chinese language to build ERNIE (which stands for "Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration"). It just so happens, however, that the same technique makes it better at understanding English as well. [...] [T]he researchers trained ERNIE on a new version of masking that hides strings of characters rather than single ones. They also trained it to distinguish between meaningful and random strings so it could mask the right character combinations accordingly. As a result, ERNIE has a greater grasp of how words encode information in Chinese and is much more accurate at predicting the missing pieces. This proves useful for applications like translation and information retrieval from a text document. The researchers very quickly discovered that this approach actually works better for English, too. Though not as often as Chinese, English similarly has strings of words that express a meaning different from the sum of their parts. Proper nouns like "Harry Potter" and expressions like "chip off the old block" cannot be meaningfully parsed by separating them into individual words.

The latest version of ERNIE uses several other training techniques as well. It considers the ordering of sentences and the distances between them, for example, to understand the logical progression of a paragraph. Most important, however, it uses a method called continuous training that allows it to train on new data and new tasks without it forgetting those it learned before. This allows it to get better and better at performing a broad range of tasks over time with minimal human interference. Baidu actively uses ERNIE to give users more applicable search results, remove duplicate stories in its news feed, and improve its AI assistant Xiao Du's ability to accurately respond to requests. The researchers have described ERNIE's latest architecture in a paper that will be presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference next year.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The speed and convenience of Amazon's own delivery network has regularly come at the price of safety, as detailed in an extensive report by BuzzFeed News and ProPublica -- including the death of Joy Covey, Amazon's first CFO, who died when a van delivering Amazon packages turned left in front of her while she was riding her bike. The report details many ways Amazon has sacrificed speed for safety to grow its delivery network and how drivers have made dangerous decisions to keep up with the demands of their job. For example:

— In the lead up to last year's holiday season, Amazon said it would make a five-day course to assess and train new delivery drivers to help improve safety. That class was never implemented, and an Amazon memo said that the company "chose to not have onroad practical training because it was a bottleneck."

— In 2013, early on into Amazon's work building its own delivery network, a proposal to improve driver safety by giving longer rest breaks -- and capping packages per route. That would have added an estimated cost of four cents per package, if it were implemented. But it was apparently shot down by Amazon exec Dave Clark, who is currently the company's SVP of Operations. He called the proposal "garbage."

— Drivers rely on an app called "Rabbit" to tell them which packages to deliver and where to deliver them. An early version of this app apparently gave very poor directions, navigating drivers onto dangerous routes, and some drivers felt they were under such time pressure for deliveries that they didn't take breaks for meals and would urinate into bottles. Amazon told BuzzFeed and ProPublica that it has made more than 500 changes to the app this year.

According to TV metrics company Nielsen, a whopping 88% of Americans stare at screens while staring at other screens. Nate Anderson from Ars Technica discovered the stat while combing through Mary Meeker's annual "Internet Trends" report: My attitude, when watching TV, is that a show you pay attention to precludes the use of phone or laptop; if you're using another screen, you're not actually watching the show. Pick better shows to watch, people! And then watch them! [...] I got to thinking about the ways in which we use television, and not all of them involve watching dark prestige dramas with 80+ Metacritic scores. Perhaps you're watching (ugh) live TV, either because you are a masochist or you love sports. (If you are watching baseball, perhaps it's both!) Picking up a smartphone during commercial breaks is arguably better than being bombarded with the consumerism of late-stage capitalism.

Say you use your TV not as a way to consume compelling crafted content, but as background noise that helps you relax. (I highly recommend Sunday afternoon golf for this purpose.) Tooling around on a laptop while the TV plays in the background is now not quite so odd. Or perhaps you watch TV simply as a way to kill time. Perhaps you're in pain, or recovering from illness, or simply bored out of your mind. The goal is not necessarily to direct your full and undivided attention to the screen; it is to get through the day until something better comes along. Using a second screen here, too, makes sense. [...] Still, I can't shake the feeling that the majority of time spent using one digital device while another displays video content nearby is low-quality time, where we aren't really paying attention to what's on either screen and so are using the planet's resources, cluttering our lives with extra noise, and reinforcing our slavish devotions to screens for little to no benefit... Do you ever find yourself browsing your phone while watching TV? If so, can it be explained by one of Nate's reasonings?

Tesla is closing the year by filing a patent on a new chemistry for better, longer-lasting and cheaper batteries. The new patent is related to the new battery cell that Tesla's battery research partner, Jeff Dahn, and his team at Dalhousie University unveiled earlier this year. The new cell "should be able to power an electric vehicle for over [1 million miles] and last at least two decades in grid energy storage," Dahn said in a paper released at the time. Electrek reports: The automaker, through its "Tesla Motors Canada" subsidiary, filed a new international patent called "Dioxazolones and nitrile sulfites as electrolyte additives for lithium-ion batteries." They wrote in the patent application: "This disclosure covers novel battery systems with fewer operative, electrolyte additives that may be used in different energy storage applications, for example, in vehicle and grid-storage. More specifically, this disclosure includes additive electrolyte systems that enhance performance and lifetime of lithium-ion batteries, while reducing costs from other systems that rely on more or other additives."

The patent application says that the new two-additive mixtures in an electrolyte solvent can be used with lithium nickel manganese cobalt compounds, also known as an NMC battery chemistry. It is commonly used in electric vehicles by many automakers, but not by Tesla. The company used the technology in its stationary energy storage systems, but it uses NCA for its vehicle battery cells. The patent filed by Tesla's battery research group mentions that the technology would be useful for both electric vehicles and grid-storage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: For those following Huawei's substantial rise over the past several years, it'll come as no surprise that the Chinese government played an important role in fostering the hardware maker. Even so, the actual numbers behind the ascent are still a bit jaw-dropping. Huawei reportedly had "access to as much as $75 billion in state support," according to a piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Christmas Day. That massive figure is culled from poring over various forms, including grants and tax breaks. Huawei, for its part, isn't denying any government support, but said in response that what it received was "small and non-material," in line with the usual variety of grants awarded to tech startups and companies.

Per WSJ's accounting of public records, Huawei got around $46 billion in loans and other support, coupled with $25 billion in tax cuts used to accelerate tech advances. There's also a billion or two here and there for things like land discounts and grants. At the very least, it seems China had a vested interest in the rise of a hardware company that could go head to head with the likes of Apple and Samsung. Certainly it's not unheard of that a government would foster some growth in the form of grants, but there's a clear question of how much.

A Google Brain and Imperial College London team have built a system -- Pre-training with Extracted Gap-sentences for Abstractive SUmmarization Sequence-to-sequence, or Pegasus -- that leverages Google's Transformers architecture combined with pretraining objectives tailored for abstractive text generation. From a report: They say it achieves state-of-the-art results in 12 summarization tasks spanning news, science, stories, instructions, emails, patents, and legislative bills, and that it shows "surprising" performance on low-resource summarization, surpassing previous top results on six data sets with only 1,000 examples. As the researchers point out, text summarization aims to generate accurate and concise summaries from input documents, in contrast to executive techniques. Rather than merely copy fragments from the input, abstractive summarization might produce novel words or cover principal information such that the output remains linguistically fluent.

Transformers are a type of neural architecture introduced in a paper by researchers at Google Brain, Google's AI research division. As do all deep neural networks, they contain functions (neurons) arranged in interconnected layers that transmit signals from input data and slowly adjust the synaptic strength (weights) of each connection -- that's how all AI models extract features and learn to make predictions. But Transformers uniquely have attention. Every output element is connected to every input element, and the weightings between them are calculated dynamically.

In a rare bipartisan achievement, Congress has moved to combat the scourge of robocalls inundating Americans. Just don't expect the phone to stop ringing any time soon. From a report: Lawmakers, industry and consumer groups say the bill represents significant steps forward, but they also concede that the calls are likely to continue -- a reflection of how a lasting solution continues to elude the companies and regulators that control the telephone system. "This isn't going to eliminate every robocall," said Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), one of the bill's prime sponsors, in an interview. "But we think it will go a long way toward getting at some of these not only annoying nuisance calls, but more importantly a lot of scam artists that prey on vulnerable populations." Even the new law's name -- the TRACED Act, for Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence -- makes clear the goal is to deter robocallers rather than eradicate them.

Lawmakers have previously tried and failed to stop robocalls, most prominently with the opening of the National Do Not Call Registry about 15 years ago. (Criminals ignore the list of off-limits numbers.) Implementing this latest anti-robocall law is likely to take years, telecom industry executives and robocall experts say. New consumer-protection rules will take months to craft and longer to implement. Lawmakers also left aspects of the problem for future study, calling for eight new reports and two new working groups. Some of the billions of robocalls Americans receive are legitimate, such as calls from a pharmacy telling a customer a prescription is ready. The calls are illegal when used for scams, or when they violate consumer-protection rules such as those against calling someone without their permission using a recorded message.

The Federal Aviation Administration put forward a rule Thursday that would empower the government to track most drones in the U.S. From a report: The rule will require drones to implement a remote ID system, which will make it possible for third parties to track them. The measure will help law enforcement identify unauthorized drones that may pose a security threat, paving the way for wider adoption of commercial drone technology. The rule said that the FAA expects all eligible drones in the U.S. to comply with the rule within three years. The approval is a milestone in commercial drone delivery, as companies including Amazon, Uber and Google parent Alphabet are racing to add unmanned aircraft to their fleets to save costs and deliver goods faster.

In June, Amazon debuted its newest delivery drone as part of a push inside Amazon to speed up its delivery times for Prime members. In October, Alphabet's drone unit Wing officially launched the country's first commercial drone delivery flight. UPS's Flight Forward subsidiary said in October that it received federal approval to operate a fleet of drones, giving it broad privileges to expand unmanned package delivery. It was the first time the FAA had granted such broad approval to a company to operate a fleet of drones as an airline.

Matt Burgess, writing for Wired UK: Last year London's 8,000 or so buses traveled 279 million miles and completed 2.23 billion journeys -- more than half of all bus trips completed in England. But they're not green enough. Yet. According to mayor Sadiq Khan, London has Europe's biggest electric bus fleet with more than 200 currently in use. It's a small fraction of the total number of buses but there are already two fully electric bus routes: 43 (running between Muswell Hill and London Bridge) and 134 (North Finchley to Warren Street). Now the capital's electric buses are set to get a new soundtrack. The purpose? To help protect people around them. As electric vehicles are almost silent at lower speeds, they're potentially dangerous to the pedestrians, who may not be paying attention or live with visual impairments.

(Research from the US Department of Transportation has even suggested people are 40 per cent more likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car than one with a noisy combustion engine). From July this year, EU regulations stipulate that all new electric need to include an Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS). This system must play a sound to alert people to the vehicle when it's moving. Cars moving at speeds of less than 20kph must have a minimum sound level of 56dB and older electric cars have to be retrofitted with a sound system by 2021. The EU regulations also apply to London's buses. In order to create a consistent sound across the city's buses, Transport for London (TfL), the transport regulator, has commissioned a sound to be used by all electric buses in the capital.

Iran's authorities have restricted mobile internet access in several provinces, an Iranian news agency reported on Wednesday, a day before new protests were expected to kick off following calls for demonstrations on social media. Reuters: Social media posts, along with some relatives of people killed in unrest last month, have called for renewed protests and for ceremonies to commemorate the dead to be held on Thursday. State media, meanwhile, said intelligence ministry agents had seized a cache of 126 mostly U.S.-made guns smuggled to the central city of Isfahan from abroad. The protests were initially sparked in November by hikes in gasoline prices but demonstrators quickly expanded their demands to cover calls for more political freedom and other issues. The government, which launched the bloodiest crackdown on demonstrators in the 40-year history of the Islamic Republic, blamed foreign enemies for stoking tensions.

In the age of social media, the snail-mail holiday photo card is taking on more significance. Permanent, physical photos stand out, and families are realizing they can be used to convey important life changes -- without having to put them into words. People are using the images on cards to signal major transitions, including divorce, illness and adoption. From a report: "The holiday card gives you a chance to put out the one version that you feel good about. It gives you editorial control," says Allen Adamson, co-founder of Metaforce, a branding and marketing consultancy. "And it has permanence. People hold on to them. They post them on refrigerators." The average person takes about 1,000 digital images per year, driven largely by cellphones, according to Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends. Sharing pictures with family and friends is the top reason people say they use social networks, according to an Adobe survey of about 4,000 people conducted in July. "Social media is this constant rolling letter," says Brad Kopitz, chief executive of Artifact Uprising, a Denver maker of custom photo gifts including cards. Sometimes, digital photos get lost in the shuffle, he says. The holiday card is a "pattern interrupt," he says. "It's like when you get a handwritten note in the mail. It's saying, 'You're part of my life and not just part of the digital noise.'" Fewer people are sending physical cards, making the ones that do go out more noticeable. Seventy percent of consumers said they planned to send greeting cards this year, down from 77% five years earlier, according to a National Retail Federation survey of nearly 8,000 adults conducted in October. That can give a printed card greater significance.