An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: One of the most remarkable "sixth" senses in the animal kingdom is magnetoreception -- the ability to detect magnetic fields -- but exactly how it works remains a mystery. Now, researchers in Japan may have found a crucial piece of the puzzle, making the first observations of live, unaltered cells responding to magnetic fields. Many animals are known to navigate by sensing the Earth's magnetic field, including birds, bats, eels, whales and, according to some studies, perhaps even humans. However, the exact mechanism at play in vertebrates isn't well understood. One hypothesis suggests it's the result of a symbiotic relationship between the animals and magnetic field-sensing bacteria. But the leading hypothesis involves chemical reactions induced in cells through what's called the radical pair mechanism.

Essentially, if certain molecules are excited by light, electrons can jump between them to their neighbors. That can create pairs of molecules with a single electron each, known as a radical pair. If the electrons in those molecules have matching spin states, they will undergo chemical reactions slowly, and if they're opposites the reactions occur faster. Since magnetic fields can influence electron spin states, they could induce chemical reactions that change an animals' behavior. In the living cells of animals with magnetoreception, proteins called cryptochromes are thought to be the molecules that undergo this radical pair mechanism. And now, researchers at the University of Tokyo have observed cryptochromes responding to magnetic fields for the first time. The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The 28 fastest days on record (since 1960) all occurred in 2020, with Earth completing its revolutions around its axis milliseconds quicker than average. Live Science reports: That's not particularly alarming -- the planet's rotation varies slightly all the time, driven by variations in atmospheric pressure, winds, ocean currents and the movement of the core. But it is inconvenient for international timekeepers, who use ultra-accurate atomic clocks to meter out the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by which everyone sets their clocks. When astronomical time, set by the time it takes the Earth to make one full rotation, deviates from UTC by more than 0.4 seconds, UTC gets an adjustment.

Until now, these adjustments have consisted of adding a "leap second" to the year at the end of June or December, bringing astronomical time and atomic time back in line. These leap seconds were tacked on because the overall trend of Earth's rotation has been slowing since accurate satellite measurement began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since 1972, scientists have added leap seconds about every year-and-a-half, on average, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The last addition came in 2016, when on New Year's Eve at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds, an extra "leap second" was added.

However, according to Time and Date, the recent acceleration in Earth's spin has scientists talking for the first time about a negative leap second. Instead of adding a second, they might need to subtract one. That's because the average length of a day is 86,400 seconds, but an astronomical day in 2021 will clock in 0.05 milliseconds shorter, on average. Over the course of the year, that will add up to a 19 millisecond lag in atomic time.

BBVA today told users of Simple -- the pioneering mobile and online banking app that it acquired for $117 million in 2014 -- that it is planning to shut down the service, moving accounts to BBVA's USA business in the process. TechCrunch reports: The move is part of an ongoing effort at BBVA -- which had been an active investor and acquirer of startups -- to streamline its business as it works on closing a merger with PNC. The latter bank announced in November last year that it would acquire the U.S. business of BBVA for $11.6 billion. In a note Simple sent out earlier today to users -- being shared on Twitter by a number of them -- the bank said that it will be transitioning their accounts to be serviced by BBVA USA, which already housed the accounts.

"BBVA USA has made the strategic decision to close Simple," the note reads. "There is no immediate impact to your accounts at Simple and nothing you need to do at this time. Since your deposits are already housed at BBVA USA, they will remain in FDIC-insured accounts there, up to the applicable limits. In the future, your Simple account will become exclusively serviced by BBVA USA, but until then you can continue to access your account and your money through the Simple app or online at Simple.com. Users will receive more details in the future about the transition to BBVA, the note continued. It is unclear how many users Simple has currently. It had around 100,000 users when it was acquired back in 2014, and some might say that the startup was ahead of its time.

Facebook has dropped the "likes" tally from public pages used by artists, public officials and brands as part of a new redesign. The New York Post reports: Those pages will now only show follower count, which Facebook says is intended to make things simpler. "Unlike Likes, Followers of a Page represent the people who can receive updates from Pages, which helps give public figures a stronger indication of their fan base," the company said in a blog post. Facebook has also redesigned pages to have their own dedicated News Feeds, where they will be able to "discover and join conversations, follow trends, interact with peers and engage with fans."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Frontier Communications has agreed to expand its fiber-to-the-premises network and improve its poor service quality as part of a bankruptcy settlement in California. Frontier committed to deploy fiber to 350,000 homes and businesses within six years on a schedule that would require the first 100,000 by the end of 2022, 250,000 by the end of 2024, and the full 350,000 by year-end 2026. The settlement, filed in late December, is pending approval by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Frontier agreed to the terms with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a union that represents Frontier employees; The Utility Reform Network (TURN), a consumer-advocacy group; and Cal Advocates, the public advocate office at CPUC.

To ensure that Frontier doesn't build only in wealthy areas, the 350,000-location deployment must include 150,000 customer locations where Frontier estimates it would receive less than a 20 percent "internal rate of return." For those 150,000 locations, Frontier will have to consult with the CWA, TURN, Cal Advocates, and tribal government leaders "to discuss the potential areas for deployment, including tribal lands and tribal communities," the settlement said. "As part of the proposed settlement, Frontier will be required to spend at least $1.75 billion over the next four years on service quality and network enhancement projects, as well as provide a detailed plan with input from CWA, TURN and Cal Advocates that identifies needs like plant repair, maintenance, hiring, and how Frontier intends to address them," the CWA said in a press release last week. The union said it also "secured a commitment from Frontier to maintain its total employee technician staffing in California over the next three years, and to maintain ten call center locations across the state."

Another settlement clause requires Frontier to spend $11.6 million over four years to deploy 25Mbps download speeds at 4,000 additional locations on tribal lands. The required upload speeds for this buildout are only 2Mbps, so it likely wouldn't involve fiber-to-the-home. But tribal areas should get some fiber as part of Frontier's requirement to deploy at 150,000 low "rate of return" areas. Frontier agreed to temporary price controls, as it "will not increase residential rates for copper-based standalone voice services, fiber-based standalone basic voice service, copper-based broadband services, and copper-based voice/broadband bundles through December 31, 2021," the settlement said. Frontier will also have to "provide a host of detailed, recurring reports" on network spending, service quality, and broadband commitments to help advocacy groups and the state monitor the company's compliance.

Japan's NEC Corp. says face marks aren't an obstacle to its facial recognition tech. Mashable reports: The Japanese company claims its new facial recognition system can identify people with face masks in less than one second, with an accuracy rate higher than 99.9 percent. The system works by closely examining the parts of a person's face not covered by a mask, such as the eyes and surrounding areas. It does require the person to submit a photo in advance, though.

The idea is for the system to be used at security checkpoints in office buildings, airports, etc., so mask-wearers can go through without removing their masks. NEC is also testing the technology out for automated payments at an unmanned convenience store in the company's headquarters in Tokyo. The company has sold the system to Lufthansa and Swiss International Airlines.

Shopify has removed stores affiliated with President Trump from its platform, citing a violation of its policies that prohibit users from promoting or supporting organizations that foment violence. CNET reports: "Shopify does not tolerate actions that incite violence," a spokesperson said in a statement. "Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause." Earlier today, Facebook blocked Trump's account indefinitely.

Twitter, Snapchat, and Twitch also disabled Trump's accounts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple will take at least half a decade to launch an autonomous, electric vehicle because development work is still at an early stage, according to people with knowledge of the efforts. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has a small team of hardware engineers developing drive systems, vehicle interior and external car body designs with the goal of eventually shipping a vehicle. That's a more ambitious goal than in previous years when the project mostly focused on creating an underlying self-driving system. The company has also added more ex-Tesla Inc. executives to the project.

Still, some Apple engineers on the project believe the company could release a product in five to seven years if Apple goes ahead with its plans. The car is nowhere near production stage, the people said, though they did warn timelines could change. They asked not to be identified discussing sensitive, internal work. The majority of the team is currently either working from home or at the office for limited time, slowing the company's ability to develop a full vehicle. [...] Reuters recently reported that Apple is aiming to begin producing a car as early as 2024.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Somehow, it's already been two decades since Microsoft first announced the Xbox, its foray into console gaming. Specifically, the Xbox was unveiled at CES in 2001 -- to commemorate that launch, Bloomberg has published an in-depth oral history of how the console came to be. It's a fascinating read, but one particular passage stands out: details on Microsoft's efforts to secure games for the brand-new console. While the company implored third-party developers to work on the Xbox, Microsoft also considered using its considerable financial might to buy developers. And Microsoft set its sights high, approaching Nintendo about an acquisition. Microsoft was laughed out of the room, says Kevin Bachus, a director for third-party relations on the Xbox project. "They just laughed their asses off," Bachus said to Bloomberg. "Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went."

Microsoft's specific pitch did make some amount of sense. At the time, Nintendo was lagging behind Sony badly from a hardware perspective. So Microsoft figured it could take on hardware production and leave Nintendo to focus on the software. "We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specs of the Xbox," said head of business development Bob Mcbreen. "The pitch was their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, 'Listen, you're much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don't you let us take care of the hardware?â(TM) But it didn't work out."

The world's cryptocurrency is now worth more than $1 trillion, with bitcoin accounting for a large majority of the value. The price of the oldest virtual currency has risen above $40,000, pushing the value of all bitcoins in circulation up to more than $700 billion. From a report: Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, is now worth more than $140 billion. Then there's a long list of less valuable cryptocurrencies, including Tether at $22 billion, Litecoin at $11 billion, and Bitcoin Cash at $8 billion. Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to own around 1 million bitcoins. Most of these were mined in the first two years of Bitcoin's existence when there was little competition. If he still has copies of the private keys that control these coins, that would give him a net worth of nearly $40 billion -- enough to make him among the 40 wealthiest people on the planet. Nakamoto has never publicly revealed his true identity and has not communicated publicly since 2014.

Sony is probably the most storied TV brand still standing and while it's no longer a top 5 seller, it remains a powerhouse among high-end models -- aka TVs that cost a lot of money. Its 2021 lineup of new sets, announced in advance of CES, includes lots of impressive technology and will likely cost a pretty penny too. From a report: The highest-end new Sony has 8K resolution, but the most interesting TV to video quality nerds is the new Master Series A90J OLED TV with higher peak brightness -- marking the first time in years an OLED TV maker has touted brighter panels. Brightness is important for HDR and for making an image pop in bright rooms, and it's the one major area where OLED traditionally lags LCD.

Sony is also the first company to officially announce a new size of OLED: 83 inches, the largest 4K OLED to date. (If you're keeping track, LG has an 88-inch 8K OLED for, cough, $30,000.) And if that's not big enough for ya, the successor series to my favorite Sony (for the money) of 2020 includes a 100-inch model. Less exciting (to me) than bigger, brighter TVs is something Sony calls "cognitive" processing, available on all of its 2021 TVs. [...] More welcome was the news that all of the models detailed below include HDMI 2.1 gaming extras, namely 4K/120fps input and variable refresh rate (the latter available via a firmware update), which were previously reserved for just one 2020 model, the X900H.

Chinese search giant Baidu plans to make electric vehicles with help from Geely, the country's largest private automaker, according to a new report from Reuters. From a report: It's the latest Chinese conglomerate to venture into the flourishing electric vehicle market, following shopping giant Alibaba and ride-hailing behemoth Didi Chuxing. Making electric vehicles would also represent a broadening of Baidu's ambition to branch into transportation. Baidu has already spent years working on self-driving technology and is the leading Chinese company in the autonomous vehicle space. Baidu will likely form a new joint venture with Geely for the EV effort, Reuters reports, and will develop software for the vehicle while Geely focuses on the hardware.

Bitcoin surged to $40,000 for the first time, doubling in value in less than a month and pushing the total market value of cryptocurrencies beyond $1 trillion. From a report: Cryptocurrencies hit the milestone after a fivefold climb in market value in the past year, data from tracker CoinGecko shows. Strategists have cited demand from speculative retail traders, trend-following quant funds, the rich and even institutional investors as among the reasons for the surge. Bitcoin rose as much as 11% on Thursday to $40,065 and has more than quadrupled in the past year, according to a composite of prices compiled by Bloomberg. It accounts for about two-thirds of cryptocurrency market value, followed by Ether at about 13%, according to CoinGecko data.

Signal, an encrypted messaging app that competes with other services including Facebook's WhatsApp, said Thursday that verification codes used to create new accounts were delayed because of a flood of new users. From a report: "We are working with carriers to resolve this as quickly as possible," the non-profit foundation said in a tweet. "Hang in there." The surge came just hours after Elon Musk endorsed the service and amid reported changes to WhatsApp's terms of service.

Facebook will ban President Donald Trump's account from posting for at least the remainder of his term in office and perhaps "indefinitely," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post on Thursday. From a report: "We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great," Zuckerberg wrote in the post. "Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete." The decision marks a major escalation by Facebook as it and other platforms have come under intense pressure from advocacy groups and prominent figures to ban Trump following his inflammatory rhetoric encouraging insurrection. Facebook and Twitter took the extraordinary step on Wednesday of temporarily locking President Donald Trump's account on their platforms after his supporters stormed the Capitol building to protest the election.

Elon Musk just became the richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $185 billion. From a report: Thursday's increase in Tesla's share price pushed Musk past Jeff Bezos, who had been the richest person since 2017 and is currently worth about $184 billion. Musk's wealth surge over the past year marks the fastest rise to the top of the rich list in history -- and marks a dramatic financial turnaround for the famed entrepreneur who just 18 months ago was in the headlines for Tesla's rapid cash burn and his personal leverage against Tesla's stock. Musk started 2020 worth about $27 billion, and was barely in the top 50 richest people. Tesla's rocketing share price -- which has increased more than nine-fold over the past year -- along with his generous pay package have added more than $150 billion to his net worth.

Digital services taxes adopted by India, Italy, and Turkey in recent years discriminate against U.S. companies, the U.S. Trade Representative said on Wednesday. From a report: USTR, which began investigations into the three nation's digital services taxes in June last year, said it found them to be inconsistent with international tax principles, unreasonable, and burdening or restricting U.S. commerce. In its detailed reports, which the office has made public, USTR studied how these digital taxes affected companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, and Twitter. USTR said it conducted these investigations on the ground of Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974.

Chinese internet companies have been violating customers' rights by misusing personal data and "bullying" people into purchases and promotions, a government-backed consumer association said on Thursday. From a report: The statement from the China Consumers Association (CCA) did not name any companies, but comes as Beijing has ramped up scrutiny of technology giants, reversing a once laissez-faire approach towards its vast internet space. "Consumers are being squeezed by data algorithms and becoming the targets of technical bullying," the association said. Companies must stop using systems to scan through consumers' personal data and offer them different prices for goods based on that information, the association said. Algorithms that checked people's internet use and other data, then sent them targeted ads and promotions, deprived customers of choice, it added. Some of the products and services promoted by these automated systems "violated the law and public order and good customs" it said, without going into further detail. Consumers' "values and moral concepts may even be distorted by algorithms and become 'playthings' in the hands of platform operators," the CCA's statement said.

Wi-Fi is about to get a lot better. Many of this year's new phones, laptops, TVs, routers, and more will come with support for Wi-Fi 6E, a new upgrade to Wi-Fi that's essentially like expanding your wireless connection from a two-lane road to an eight-lane highway. From a report: It's the biggest upgrade to Wi-Fi in 20 years, and connections should be faster and a lot more reliable because of it. The Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry-wide group that oversees Wi-Fi, is now starting to certify the first wave of products with support for Wi-Fi 6E. Phones, PCs, and laptops with support should start hitting the market in the first months of 2021, according to the IDC research group, and TVs and VR devices with support are expected to arrive by the middle of the year. Some of the first devices are likely to be announced over the next week.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Waymo swears it's not out to pick nits and give us all an exercise in linguistics. The fact it will no longer use the term "self-driving" when describing its technology is about education and safety, Alphabet Inc.'s division devoted to the technology said Wednesday. Going forward, Waymo will call its technology "fully autonomous" to create, what it believes, is an important distinction. The company's argument rests entirely on how the public perceives "self-driving" as a term. Waymo points out, without naming names, that some automakers -- Tesla comes to mind -- toss the phrase around even though its technology doesn't fully drive a car on its own. Worse, Waymo said the proliferation of "self-driving" can lead to drivers taking their hands off the wheel when it's unsafe to do so.

By moving to the term "fully autonomous," Waymo hopes to lay the groundwork for standard industry terminology and help the public understand that "fully autonomous" means the car makes every decision, well, autonomously on its own accord. It also puts some space between Waymo's technology and companies that continue to brand their own systems as "self-driving." In the end, it's a bit of a branding exercise, but I think Waymo's heart is in the right place.

According to Nielsen company SuperData's 2020 year in review, 55 percent of people picked up video games during the first phase of lockdowns. The Verge reports: According to SuperData, 66 percent of consumers from 18 to 24 played more console games, while 60 percent played more mobile titles. Unsurprisingly, buyers also tended toward digital purchases. SuperData reports that 27 percent of people -- about 1 in 4 -- played games to stay in touch with each other. [...] As physical spaces disappeared, video games became one of the few places for people to spend time together... SuperData estimates that digital games alone garnered $126.6 billion over the course of the year. The numbers may not spike this year as much as they did in 2020, but SuperData predicts "the long-term habits formed during lockdown are here to stay."

Norway has become the first country to have sold more electric cars than petrol, hybrid, and diesel engines in a year. The Independent reports: Electric cars comprised 54% of all new vehicle sales in Norway for 2019. The Norwegian government plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025, and is using tax breaks and financial incentives to encourage the purchasing of more sustainable vehicles. Battery electric vehicles made up 54.3% of new car sales in 2020, up from 42% in 2019, according to figures published by the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) on Tuesday.

Cars with diesel-only engines have fallen from a height of being 75.7 per cent of the Norweigen vehicle market in 2011 to just 8.6 per cent in 2020. "We're definitely on track to reach the 2025 target," said Oyvind Thorsen, the chief executive of OFV. The most popular model in the country was the Audi e-tron sports utility and sportsback vehicles, with the Tesla mid-size Model 3 taking second place.