Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, taking office at a moment of profound economic, health and political crises with a promise to seek unity after a tumultuous four years that tore at the fabric of American society. New York Times: With his hand on a five-inch-thick Bible that has been in his family for 128 years, Mr. Biden recited the 35-word oath of office swearing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" in a ceremony administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., completing the process at 11:49 a.m., 11 minutes before the authority of the presidency formally changes hands.

The ritual transfer of power came shortly after Kamala Devi Harris was sworn in as vice president by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, her hand on a Bible that once belonged to Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights icon and Supreme Court justice. Ms. Harris's ascension made her the highest-ranking woman in the history of the United States and the first Black American and first person of South Asian descent to hold the nation's second highest office. The ceremony on a chilly, breezy day with a smattering of snowflakes brought to a close the stormy and divisive four-year presidency of Donald J. Trump. In characteristic fashion, Mr. Trump once again defied tradition by leaving Washington hours before the swearing in of his successor rather than face the reality of his own election defeat, although Mike Pence, his vice president, did attend. President Biden's speech: This is America's day. This is democracy's day. Few people in our nation's history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we're in now. To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words and requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity. Live coverage: YouTube.

Scientists from a trio of universities have combined satellite imagery with deep learning to detect elephants from space. The goal is to help protect these endangered species from poachers or habitat destruction. Their study was published in the journal Ecology and Conservation. Interesting Engineering reports: The team's method proved comparable to human detection accuracy and could help solve a number of existing challenges, such as cross-border limits, and cloud coverage, among others. The team used Maxar WorldView-3 satellite imagery, which is capable of collecting more than one million acres (5,000 km2) imagery in one go in just a few minutes. This allows for fast repeat imaging when necessary, and minimizes the risk of double counting as it's so rapid.

Then the team leveraged deep learning to process the vast amount of imagery it collected from Maxar's WorldView-3 satellite. In a matter of hours, the team collected its relevant data. This process usually takes months when sorting out by hand. On top of speed, the deep learning algorithms also provided consistent results less prone to error, as well as false negatives and false positives. In order to develop this method, the team created a customized training dataset of over 1,000 elephants, and then fed it into a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). After trials, the team concluded that its CNN can detect elephants in satellite imagery with as high an accuracy as human detection capabilities.

Netflix has officially amassed 200 million subscribers, sending shares soaring 12%. As it continues to compete with rival services, Netflix says it's preparing to roll out a new feature that will allow the service to pick a title based on a user's preferences rather than requiring them to browse for something to watch. Gizmodo reports: Netflix said in its fourth-quarter shareholders letter released Tuesday that it managed to secure 8.5 million more paid subscriptions to help the streaming giant cross the 200 million mark. All told, the company added a total of 37 million paid subscriptions during 2020, no doubt helped by the surge in TV viewing and streaming that resulted from lockdown orders and quarantine measures amid the coronavirus pandemic. For some context, Netflix says memberships were up 23 percent from the previous year in the fourth quarter.

Even with the pandemic significantly delaying production timelines and release dates, Netflix says it's still on track to release at least one original film every week of 2021. Plus, the company said it has a staggering 500-plus titles either in post-production or ready to hit its service. Most surprising, though, was Netflix's claim that it is "every close" to being cash-flow positive and no longer needs to raise external financing. Additionally, the company plans "on repaying the bond at maturity out of cash on hand, as we are currently well above our minimum cash needs."

Qualcomm has announced a new mobile phone processor: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870, a successor to last year's Snapdragon 865 and 865 Plus models. To be clear, the 870 isn't a new next-gen design -- that title goes to the Snapdragon 888, which makes far more substantial improvements in performance and new features. From a report: The 870, on the other hand, is virtually identical to the 865 and 865 Plus, with the same design right down to the Kryo 585 CPU and Adreno 650 GPU cores. The 870 is clocked at 3.2GHz, however, making it about 10 percent faster than the original 865's 2.84GHz and about 3 percent faster than the 865 Plus (which offered 3.1GHz speeds). Think of it almost like a Snapdragon 865 Plus-plus. Qualcomm says that the reason for the new chip is in response to manufacturer and market demands. The 870 is designed for companies that want to offer a top-tier processor but don't need the absolute best features that the flagship Snapdragon 888 offers and the higher price tag that it demands. Instead, the company says that it expects that Snapdragon 870 phones should hit a sub-$800 price tag (although, confusingly, we've already seen Snapdragon 888 phones like the $799 Galaxy S21 start to bleed into that range).

Long-time technology reporter/commentator Kara Swisher weighs in on the de-platforming of U.S. president Trump, arguing Trump "was only following the rules set for him and it was entirely the fault of the tech companies for giving him the kind of latitude that allowed him to go that far." Like a parent who gives a child endless bowls of sugar and then wonders why their kid is batshit crazy, tech has pretended to be obtuse to the consequences of their products and the choices that have been made about them. For years I have written that these companies have turned themselves into the digital arms dealers of the Internet age, amplifying and weaponizing everything. They might have cleaned up the Trump mess, but they also made the Trump mess possible by architecting systems that thrive on enragement.

Most of all, they have tried to duck responsibility. I have always been amazed by Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg's statement that he did not want to be an "arbiter of the truth." My question for him: Why then did he build a platform that requires it?

Even more importantly, we must examine the power that these companies wield and how to deal with that going forward... [W]hile justifiably putting a sock in Trump's toxic pie-hole, they also showed how swiftly they could end whole businesses, as was the case with the right-fave social media platform Parler.... [T]here is nothing that Parler was doing that companies like Facebook were not guilty of too and in larger measure and for a very long time. While I would not go as far as calling the company a scapegoat, as it did allow its system to be used in dangerous ways, it certainly got a lion's share of the hurt that rained down on tech and that others probably deserved even more.

This brings us to the issue at hand: Power. Tech companies have too much of it, but it should be looked at through the lens of market concentration that results in the dampening of innovation needed to inevitably upend the leaders. Such a situation demands substantive and bipartisan action to deal with each company differently and with different remedies, which include fines, enforcement of existing laws, new regulation and, yes, antitrust action. That has already started, which is good, as has a series of dopey attempts to repeal Section 230, which provides broad immunity to digital platforms. What it needs is reform...

The higher a person's income, the more likely they were to protect themselves at the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, Johns Hopkins University economists find. From a report: When it comes to adopting behaviors including social distancing and mask wearing, the team detected a striking link to their financial well-being. People who made around $230,000 a year were as much as 54% more likely to increase these types of self-protective behaviors compared to people making about $13,000. The findings, that could contribute to more accurate predictions of how the disease will spread, appear in the latest Journal of Population Economics.

As part of a six-country survey, 1,000 people in the United States, from Texas, Florida, California and New York, were asked a series of questions in April 2020 to determine if and how their behavior had changed as Covid-19 cases were beginning to spike across the country. The resulting data includes information on income, gender and race along with unique variables relevant to the pandemic, such as work arrangements and housing quality. The team, which included economics graduate student Matthew Zahn, found that while almost everyone changed their behavior in some way to try to stay safe, people making the most money made the most changes. The highest earners were 13% more likely to change their behaviors, 32% more likely to increase social distancing and 30% more likely to increase hand washing and mask wearing. But the team found it was also much easier for people with more money to take extra safety measures. Higher-income individuals were more likely to report being able to work from home and more likely to have transitioned to telework instead of losing their job. The researchers found the ability to telework emerged as a huge predictor of whether someone would social distance. Compared to somebody who continued to work, people able to telework were 24% more likely to social distance.

Twitter shares fell 7% in pre-market trading after the social media platform permanently banned outgoing President Donald Trump. From a report: The company confirmed its decision in a blog post on Friday, saying Trump's tweets breached policies by risking incitement to violence. It cited his posts on the riots in the U.S. capital last week. It's a watershed moment for technology platforms that have faced conflicting pressures on one hand to restrict misinformation and hate speech, and defend free speech on the other. Twitter was Trump's preferred channel for amplifying attacks on his rivals, spreading conspiracies and provoking other nations during his four years in power.

Google is planning to release a new Nest Hub in 2021 that will feature sleeping tracking powered by the company's Soli radar technology. 9to5Google reports: Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group first unveiled Soli in 2015, but it did not launch on a consumer device until 2019. The sensor lets you perform air gestures over the Pixel 4 to play/pause and skip/rewind tracks, as well as snooze alarms and silence phone calls. It's also used to speed up face unlock by detecting when users reach for their phone and turning on the components needed for recognition. Third-party Android developers can incorporate the tech, which emits radar waves, into games and other interactive experiences. Meanwhile, the new Nest Thermostat also leverages it for improved motion sensing to wake the screen when you walk by.

Soli will soon be used to track sleep. Embedded into this upcoming Nest Hub, Google is embracing how Smart Displays are often placed on bedside tables as alarm clocks and speakers. The original Nest Hub is more likely to be used in sensitive areas since it lacks a camera, with sleep tracking serving as another incentive to place this device on your nightstand. The FCC filing at the start of this week revealed that the Soli sensor placed in the Nest Hub will have technical capabilities identical to the Pixel 4. Google has long touted precise and fine gesture recognition, like spinning a virtual dial or adjusting a slider. This should translate to detecting any body movements you make at night. For comparison, the Nest Thermostat uses a more limited version of Soli to detect general motion. It's possible that Google will also use Soli on this Nest Hub for gestures to control content. The Nest Hub Max today already uses its camera to play/pause tracks when you hold up a hand.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Torrent Freak: On December 21, 2020, Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, filed a lawsuit hoping to have the court compel Indian ISPs to block both Sci-Hub and Libgen. Accusing the platforms of blatantly infringing their rights on a massive scale, the publishers said that due to the defiant nature of the platforms, ISP blocking is the only effective solution to hand. The massive complaint, which runs to 2,169 pages, was received by Sci-Hub with little time to review its contents. This not-insignificant issue was quickly pointed out to the Court, with counsel for Sci-Hub asking for an extension. After Sci-Hub assured the Court (pdf) that "no new articles or publications, in which the plaintiffs have copyright" would be uploaded to the site in advance of the next hearing, more time was granted to respond.

The case is set for a hearing tomorrow but in advance of that, interested parties are attempting to put the government under pressure to intervene by preventing a blockade that, according to them, would cause damage to education and society in India. Speaking on behalf of thousands of scientists, academics, teachers and students, the Breakthrough Science Society (BSS) is expressing dismay at the publishers' efforts to prevent the "free flow of information" between those who produce it and those who seek it. [...] Instead of demonizing Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan, the group describes her work as an effective solution to make research papers available to all for the benefit of humanity. As a result, the Breakthrough Science Society says it actually supports the work of Sci-Hub and Libgen, arguing that their work is not illegal and should continue unhindered.

In an effort to pressure the Indian government to intervene on behalf of the people, the Breakthrough Science Society has launched a petition, calling on everyone from scientists and academics to teachers and students, to declare that knowledge should be accessible to all, not just those who can afford to pay the publishers' rates. Dr. Ashwani Mahajan, an Associate Professor at the University of Delhi, who among other things describes himself as a policy interventionist, says that if the ISPs are compelled to block Sci-Hub and Libgen, Indian researchers' access to information will be seriously undermined. While acknowledging that the government spends large sums of money to subscribe to journals, Mahajan says that researchers and students are heavily reliant on Sci-Hub and Libgen for information that the publishing industry itself does not pay for.

An anonymous reader writes: So on New Year's Eve, the "jam" rock band Phish re-broadcast their legendary 1995 performance on New Year's Eve -- while playing a game of chess against the audience. (Just as they'd done in 1995 -- although during that tour they'd made two just moves during each show.) In a video promoting this year's event, a chess "historian" remembers "No single band in the '90s was playing better chess against their audience" and shares an alleged conspiracy theory that they were being coached by Garry Kasparov. And yet, "Midway through the second of two nights at Madison Square Garden, the audience takes Phish's queen" -- and the band resigned.

This had left their ongoing audience-versus-band match with a score (one game apiece). So 25 years later, for New Year's Eve, Phish finally staged the great re-match.

"However, just as it was time to begin the game (and as the show kicked off with opener "Punch You In The Eye"), Chess.com, the popular chess site hosting the online game, crashed," reports JamBands.com.
Thinking quickly, the band announced on Twitter that "We're making a quick pivot, 2020 style, to live chess mode. We will be using a moderator from Chess.com who will take feedback on the move within the chat and then complete the audience move."

JamBands.com explains how the long-awaited match finally culminated: In between sets, the broadcast cut to a live zoom call between all four band members, during which they discussed their next moves in the game and chatted. At various points, Gordon and Anastasio picked up guitars, and Gordon had a surreal projection of a chess board floating behind him at times. During the first break, McConnell referenced the technical difficulties. "I'm sorry this didn't work out to plan, but nothing this year did," he said with a laugh.

During the break between the second and third sets, the shenanigans increased, with drummer Jon Fishman following through on an off-hand promise to shave his head. (At first, the other three band members didn't even notice.) Ultimately, the band defeated the audience... Down to just their king, queen and a few pawns, the audience resigned as the band was up a pawn and still had a rook and queen on the board...

Phish raised funds for a charity during the broadcast. "For this final webcast of the year, our beneficiary will be none other than The WaterWheel Foundation itself," the band wrote prior to the stream. "Since 1997, the band and their fans have collaborated on a nationwide charitable endeavor by raising funds and donating the proceeds across the country. This year alone, collectively we have raised and donated nearly $750,000 to 27 different nonprofits during the Dinner And A Movie series. Join us in continuing to support those in need...."
You can watch the entire four-and-a-half-hour webcast on YouTube.

Canon could take a page from DJI's playback for its next camera. From a report: The company has filed a patent, first spotted by Canon News, that showcases a handheld camera that combines an Osmo Pocket-like design with its RF series of mirrorless lenses. The camera features a swivel mechanism that allows the sensor and lens mount to easily switch between forward-facing and selfie orientations. The design offers several advantages to your traditional camera when it comes to vlogging. The most notable of which is you wouldn't have to contort your hand to properly frame yourself in the shot. The fact the screen is always in front of you would also make it easier to keep tabs on your footage as it's recording.

If you bought a wooden chess set after watching "The Queen's Gambit," the price you paid was most likely dictated by just four pieces. From a report: The knights alone can account for as much as 50 percent of the cost of a nice wooden set. While the rest of the pieces can be machine-made, the knights are carved by hand to resemble the head of a horse, a tedious process to make sure all four are exactly the same. The knights in the set used in World Chess Championship matches ($310 for the pieces and $220 for the board) were inspired by a horse carving from the Parthenon in Athens, said Ilya Merenzon, the chief executive of World Chess, the company that licenses the rights to the matches. The process of creating the set when it was redesigned in 2013 required extensive back-and-forth communication with carvers in India to discuss minutiae like the horse's smile. About 10 people specialize in carving knights for the World Chess sets, Mr. Merenzon said. It takes about two weeks to produce 100 sets, with a set of knights requiring about six hours to carve, he said. Chess sales spiked 125 percent after the October premiere of "The Queen's Gambit," a Netflix show about an orphaned chess prodigy, Beth Harmon, who crushes the male-dominated game. Many sets sold out before Christmas.

The House of Staunton in Alabama, one of the world's largest chess retailers, offers wooden sets with relatively simple knights, such as the $129 tournament-style set in boxwood and rosewood, as well as sets with more detail. They go all the way up to a luxurious $5,995 set in "antiqued" boxwood and ebony and featuring intricate horses. In the higher-end sets, "you can literally see the teeth carved into the horse's mouth," said Noelle Kendrick, the House of Staunton's business development director. "They are extremely detailed. You can see the mane, the rivets of the mane, if it has a flowing mane." The ornamentation isn't strictly decorative. In tournament play, milliseconds matter, and so does how a piece fits into your hand, Mr. Merenzon said. This is particularly true in the especially fast-paced games that can be used to break ties at tournaments: "blitz"-style games, which generally last less than 10 minutes, and "rapid" games, in which players have 25 minutes to make all their moves. The players tend to move their pieces and press their clock in one swift motion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: With great fanfare last week, 44 attorneys general hit Google with two antitrust complaints, following a landmark lawsuit the Justice Department and 11 states lodged against the Alphabet Inc. unit in October. What's less known is that Oracle Corp. spent years working behind the scenes to convince regulators and law enforcement agencies in Washington, more than 30 states, the European Union, Australia and at least three other countries to rein in Google's huge search-and-advertising business. Those efforts are paying off.

Officials in more than a dozen of the states that sued Google received what has been called Oracle's "black box" presentation showing how Google tracks users' personal information, said Ken Glueck, Oracle's top Washington lobbyist and the architect of the company's antitrust campaign against Google. Glueck outlined for Bloomberg the presentation, which often entails putting an Android phone inside a black briefcase to show how Google collects users' location details -- even when the phones aren't in use -- and confirmed the contours of the pressure campaign. "I couldn't be happier," said Glueck about the barrage of lawsuits. "As far as I can tell, there are more states suing Google than there are states." Oracle has fallen behind the tech giants in the marketplace, yet is notching one legal and regulatory win after another against them, Google especially. In response, Google spokesman Jose Castaneda denounced Oracle's "cloak-and-dagger lobbying campaign," saying "while Oracle describes itself as the biggest data broker on the planet, we're focused on keeping consumers' information safe and secure."

Jupiter and Saturn will appear as a double planet in the night sky Monday evening thanks to a rare planetary alignment known as a "great conjunction." Axios explains how to see it: In order to see the two planets, step outside under clear skies not long after sundown and look to the southwest. Jupiter will look brighter than Saturn and will appear just above the ringed planet. If you hold out your hand to the sky, the tip of your pinky will be able to cover both planets at once, according to NASA. The two planets will be bright enough to see from most cities. For those interested, NASA has a dedicated article on how to photograph the conjunction.

Todd Haselton from CNBC reviews Apple Fitness+, with some thoughts on how it compares with Peloton's similar app. Here's an excerpt from his report: Apple's subscription fitness app, Fitness+, launches Monday. I've been using it for the past several days and I think it offers a nice variety of workouts that people will like. You need an Apple Watch to take the prerecorded exercise classes, which are available on iPhones, iPads and the Apple TV. It's a smart way for Apple to make the Apple Watch even stickier. If people get really into the fitness classes, like I have, it will be yet another way Apple keeps people locked in to its ecosystem of products. Why buy another phone, tablet or watch if you really like Fitness+? It also comes at a great time, when people aren't in gyms and are at home looking for ways to exercise.

Like other fitness apps, including Peloton's, which starts at $12.99 a month for classes that don't need the company's connected spin bike, you don't need anything to use it. But, you'll get more out of it if you have any indoor cycle, treadmill, rowing machine or free weights, since some of the classes require equipment. But you don't need anything special. I've been riding a hand-me-down exercise bike, for example. Fitness+ costs $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. It's also part of the Premier Apple One plan, which costs $29.95 per month, and includes other Apple products like Apple Music, Apple TV+ and extra iCloud storage bundled together at a discount.

Natalie Wolchover writes via Quanta Magazine: As fundamental constants go, the speed of light, c, enjoys all the fame, yet c's numerical value says nothing about nature; it differs depending on whether it's measured in meters per second or miles per hour. The fine-structure constant, by contrast, has no dimensions or units. It's a pure number that shapes the universe to an astonishing degree -- "a magic number that comes to us with no understanding," as Richard Feynman described it. Paul Dirac considered the origin of the number "the most fundamental unsolved problem of physics."

Numerically, the fine-structure constant, denoted by the Greek letter a (alpha), comes very close to the ratio 1/137. It commonly appears in formulas governing light and matter. [...] The constant is everywhere because it characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic force affecting charged particles such as electrons and protons. Because 1/137 is small, electromagnetism is weak; as a consequence, charged particles form airy atoms whose electrons orbit at a distance and easily hop away, enabling chemical bonds. On the other hand, the constant is also just big enough: Physicists have argued that if it were something like 1/138, stars would not be able to create carbon, and life as we know it wouldn't exist.

Today, in a new paper in the journal Nature, a team of four physicists led by Saida Guellati-Khelifa at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory in Paris reported the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant. The team measured the constant's value to the 11th decimal place, reporting that a = 1/137.03599920611. (The last two digits are uncertain.) With a margin of error of just 81 parts per trillion, the new measurement is nearly three times more precise than the previous best measurement in 2018 by Muller's group at Berkeley, the main competition. (Guellati-Khelifa made the most precise measurement before Muller's in 2011.) Muller said of his rival's new measurement of alpha, "A factor of three is a big deal. Let's not be shy about calling this a big accomplishment."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Rifle fire, hurried footsteps and distant explosions. The rat-a-tat of a firefight. Cars mangled from grenades. The young man was transfixed. It could have been any day in Kabul, where targeted assassinations, terrorist attacks and wanton violence have become routine, and the city often feels as if it is under siege. But for Safiullah Sharifi, his behind firmly planted on a dusty stoop in the Qala-e Fatullah neighborhood, the death and destruction unfurled on his phone, held landscape-style in his hands. "On Friday I play from early morning to around 4 p.m.," said Mr. Sharifi, 20, with a sly grin, as if he knew he was detailing the outline of an addiction to a passer-by. His left hand is tattooed with a skull in a jester's hat, a grim image offset by his lanky and not-quite-old-enough demeanor. "Almost every night, it's 8 p.m. to 3 a.m."

The game is called PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds, but to its millions of players worldwide, no matter the language, it's referred to as PUBG (pronounced pub-gee). It's violent. And it's becoming widely played across Afghanistan, almost as an escape from reality as the 19-year-old war grinds on. In the game, the player drops onto a large piece of terrain, finds weapons and equipment and kills everyone, all of whom are other people playing the game against each other. Victory translates to being the last person or team standing. Which makes its growing popularity in Afghanistan peculiar since that can eerily almost describe the state of the war -- despite ongoing peace negotiations in Qatar.

Even as ending that war seems ever more elusive, Afghan lawmakers are trying to ban PUBG, arguing that it promotes violence and distracts the young from their schoolwork. But Mr. Sharifi laughed at the mention of the proposed ban, knowing he could circumvent it easily with software on his phone. He said he uses the game to communicate with friends and sometimes talks to girls who also play it. That is a remarkable feat on its own since only in the last several years have Afghanistan's cell networks become capable of delivering the kind of data needed to play a game like PUBG, let alone communicate with people concurrently. Gaming centers became popular in Kabul in the years after the 2001 United States invasion, which reversed the Taliban's ban on entertainment including video games and music. But PUBG and other mobile games are usurping these staples because they are downloadable on a smartphone, and free, in a country where 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

A US court has ordered Google to hand over the personal emails of the son of a Russian oligarch as part of a bitter $601 million divorce case. From a report [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]: Judge Virginia DeMarchi in California told the US tech group to surrender Temur Akhmedov's emails for use as evidence in a lawsuit brought by his mother, Tatiana Akhmedova, the wife of an ally of President Vladimir Putin. Ms Akhmedova has gone to court in the US and the UK in an attempt to force her ex-husband, Farkhad Akhmedov, to pay the world's largest-ever divorce settlement. Google said the order was a breach of its customer's privacy. The divorce case, which is being funded by litigation financier Burford Capital, has led to a legal battle over assets including a helicopter, a private jet and a superyacht called the Luna that used to belong to Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich. Google sought to block the order to give up the emails this week on the basis that to do so would infringe Mr Akhmedov's right to privacy because he had not given consent to share them. Ms DeMarchi said Google's concern for the "privacy and security of its account holders' communications" was "commendable" but ruled the request did not breach the US Stored Communications Act, which governs voluntary and compelled disclosure of emails. The information from the emails will be used to learn whether Temur assisted his father in the fraudulent transfer of assets, and if so, to win a judgment against him, Tatiana Akhmedova said in a filing.

"Does the human brain resemble the Universe?" teases an announcement that an astrophysicist of the University of Bologna and a neurosurgeon of the University of Verona "compared the network of neuronal cells in the human brain with the cosmic network of galaxies...and surprising similarities emerged."

A Slashdot reader shares their report: Despite the substantial difference in scale between the two networks (more than 27 orders of magnitude), their quantitative analysis, which sits at the crossroads of cosmology and neurosurgery, suggests that diverse physical processes can build structures characterized by similar levels of complexity and self-organization. The human brain functions thanks to its wide neuronal network that is deemed to contain approximately 69 billion neurons. On the other hand, the observable universe can count upon a cosmic web of at least 100 billion galaxies.

Within both systems, only 30% of their masses are composed of galaxies and neurons. Within both systems, galaxies and neurons arrange themselves in long filaments or nodes between the filaments. Finally, within both system, 70% of the distribution of mass or energy is composed of components playing an apparently passive role: water in the brain and dark energy in the observable Universe.

Starting from the shared features of the two systems, researchers compared a simulation of the network of galaxies to sections of the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum. The goal was to observe how matter fluctuations scatter over such diverse scales. "We calculated the spectral density of both systems. This is a technique often employed in cosmology for studying the spatial distribution of galaxies", explains Franco Vazza (astrophysicist at the University of Bologna). "Our analysis showed that the distribution of the fluctuation within the cerebellum neuronal network on a scale from 1 micrometre to 0.1 millimetres follows the same progression of the distribution of matter in the cosmic web but, of course, on a larger scale that goes from 5 million to 500 million light-years".

The two researchers also calculated some parameters characterising both the neuronal network and the cosmic web: the average number of connections in each node and the tendency of clustering several connections in relevant central nodes within the network. "Once again, structural parameters have identified unexpected agreement levels. Probably, the connectivity within the two networks evolves following similar physical principles, despite the striking and obvious difference between the physical powers regulating galaxies and neurons", adds Alberto Feletti (neurosurgeon at the University of Verona).

The Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations, games and toys in our software collection. Jason Scott writes in a blog post: Utilizing an in-development Flash emulator called Ruffle, we have added Flash support to the Internet Archive's Emularity system, letting a subset of Flash items play in the browser as if you had a Flash plugin installed. While Ruffle's compatibility with Flash is less than 100%, it will play a very large portion of historical Flash animation in the browser, at both a smooth and accurate rate.

We have a showcase of the hand-picked best or representative Flash items in this collection. If you want to try your best at combing through a collection of over 1,000 flash items uploaded so far, here is the link. You will not need to have a flash plugin installed, and the system works in all browsers that support Webassembly. For many people: See you later! Enjoy the Flash stuff!