Not everyone is a fan of self-driving cars. Chandler, Arizona, is one of the Phoenix suburbs where Alphabet-owned Waymo is testing self-driving Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans, and where it debuted a commercial taxi-like driverless car service operated through an app earlier this month. Its driverless vehicles have weathered nearly two dozen attacks from irate locals over the past two years, including tire slashings and being pelted by rocks, according to the New York Times (paywall). “There are other places they can test,” Erik O’Polka, 37, told the Times. O’Polka received a warning from police in November after reportedly making multiple attempts to run Waymo vehicles off the road using his Jeep Wrangler, including driving toward one of the Waymo cars head-on. O’Polka and his wife told the Times that they turned against Waymo after one of the company’s vehicles nearly hit their 10-year-old son while he was playing in a cul-de-sac. “They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” O’Polka told the Times. “They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” his wife, Elizabeth, added. A lot has been written about what will happen to cities and their residents once driverless cars become ubiquitous. Generally speaking, it’s been taken as a given that people will want the technology. The vision is that self-driving cars will dramatically reduce auto fatalities while also reducing congestion and freeing spaces like parking lots for other uses as people give up their personal vehicles. The incidents in Arizona, while relatively rare, suggest the transition won’t be so smooth. Many people are worried about what advances in automation like driverless cars could mean for their jobs. Others fear the technology will be deployed before it’s fully ready, increasing the dangers. Arizona has particular reason to fear this. In March, one of Uber’s self-driving vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian at night in Tempe, another suburb of Phoenix. After the incident, Arizona’s governor banned Uber from testing autonomous cars and the company suspended tests throughout the US. Uber only recently resumed driverless car testing on US public roads. The Arizona Republic, which first reported the assaults on Waymo, noted that people who monitor Waymo’s self-driving cars rarely press charges against harassers. One exception was 69-year-old Roy Leonard Haselton, who police arrested and charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct for aiming a handgun at a passing Waymo vehicle and its human driver. The incidents have made Waymo employees wary of people or cars that seem to pay them too much attention. The Republic recently spent three days tailing dozens of Waymo minivans in the Phoenix metro area for more than 170 miles. After reporters watched Waymo’s operations for a while from a public sidewalk, a security guard approached to ask what they were doing, which prompted a call from Waymo’s press agency. In another incident, a Waymo vehicle the reporters had tailed for half an hour pulled into a police substation, where two officers yelled for the reporters to stop. Police said Waymo had called out of fear their driver was being harassed. Based on the company’s history in the Phoenix area, it’s not surprising why Waymo thought that.

Angela Merkel has big plans for Germany in the new year. In her year-end address, the chancellor focused on the country’s international role, committing to taking on more responsibilities in a difficult political climate. Merkel spoke about the challenges of climate change, migration, terrorism. She also called on international relations to manage those problems while admitting that traditional alliances are increasingly under threat—likely a reference to the rising tide of international populism, and especially to the disagreements she has had with Donald Trump in the past year. “Openness, tolerance, and respect, these are values that have made our country strong,” Merkel said, urging her country to protect those values in the international arena as well as at home. “We must stand up for them together, even if it is uncomfortable and exhausting.” Merkel, who has faced a significant reduction in power as a result of her progressive immigration policies, framed this not as a gesture of altruism, but as a strategy that’s important for Germany, too. ”We must take on more responsibility in our own interests,” she said. With that, Merkel explicitly made a bid to give Germany more international prominence, and set her country—in the absence of US international leadership—as the leader of the so-called “free world” ahead of its United Nations Security Council chair, starting Jan. 1, 2019. “Democracy thrives on change,” said Merkel in her speech. Indeed. The UK is now grappling with the consequences of the xenophobic, anti-immigration campaign that led to Brexit, while the US is in the midst of a government shutdown brought about by Trump’s plan to build a border wall between the US and Mexico. The world has changed so much that UK and US, which once appointed themselves leaders of the free world, are confronted by the very country they defeated during World War II in the name of openness, tolerance, and respect.

Another year’s end, another failure to send a holiday card recapping your year and wishing your friends health and happiness in the next. But fear not! No one really sends paper cards anymore—not when the earnestness, humblebrags, and well wishes of yesteryear’s holiday cards now play out on Instagram. The longest-running Insta-tradition is best nine—also called top nine, depending on your hashtag preference. Using the website topnine.co (or its associated app and many imitators), users enter their account name and are emailed a three-by-three square post of their nine most-liked Instagram posts of the year. Best nine makes content out of your content, and shows that it’s not enough to get likes all year—you must also get likes for the likes you got. It’s also an opportunity to prove that pictures of your face (or baby, if you’re Chrissy Teigen) almost always performed better than pictures of your latte, sunset, or favorite meme. (It’s not that you’re vain; your followers just love you.) Many use the top-nine tradition as an opportunity to reflect on their highs and lows, to thank their followers for a great year, and to state their goals for the next. Some skip the square format, and simply re-post their most-liked pictures in a multi-photo format. More low-key users might skip the top-nine outsourcing, and instead post a #tbt or high point of the year—definitely a wedding photo, if they got married in the prior 365 days—and distill what they’ve learned this year into a pithy caption. For Instagram users who really want to take their wistful year-end reflection up a notch, we now have Stories. The frightening mastery of this ephemeral feature over the past two years has made 2018 a hallmark year for meandering month-by-month recaps of Instagrammers’ years, sponsored vacation by sponsored vacation. Instead of being algorithmic or follower-driven, a la top nine, this is a self-curated greatest hits, using content that was already curated as the raw material. It’s year-end reflection for content-creating professionals. That our year-end contemplation now plays out on Instagram is not surprising. No one really liked going to the trouble of sending paper cards, and traditional holiday cards were just as carefully curated. The truly devoted, those who sent computer print-outs of the year’s babies, graduations, sweet 16s and family vacations, were really no different than the power-‘grammers of today. Much like holiday cards of yore, the year-end Instagram post is self-centered but also earnest and vaguely vulnerable. Indulgent but occasionally charming. It is, in a way, a lot like us.

If you bought into the Dow index of blue-chip US stocks at the start of 2018, you were sitting pretty nine months later, with a gain of around 8%. Then the bottom fell out. Amid wrenching volatility, the market tumbled in the fourth quarter, with the declines particularly pronounced in December. (Happy holidays!) In fact, the Dow’s 8.7% decline in December ranked as the fourth-worst since 1900, beat only by 1916 (-10.3%), 1930 (-10.3%), and 1931 (-17%). It’s never a good sign when you’re comparing things to WWI and the Great Depression. The drop was even worse for the fourth quarter. But historically speaking, that 11.8% decline was only the 10th-worst on record since 1900. So there’s that. Taking in the entire year, things look up…ish. The Dow’s 5.6% decline in 2018 just barely makes the rankings of the 30 worst years since the turn of the 20th century. It was the poorest market performance since 2008, when the Dow shed a third of its value during the depths of the subprime credit crisis. For what it’s worth, the longest US bull market in history is still intact. And other countries’ markets fared far worse this year (paywall). Slowing economic growth, rising interest rates, trade tensions, and a host of other worries loom over the markets at the start of 2019, just as they did towards the end of 2018. Looking back over the ups and downs of the past year, it could’ve been worse. Considering the carnage over the past month or so, that’s at least something to celebrate.

As you may remember, the largest known prime number, M82589933 (or 282,589,933-1), was discovered earlier this month. At over 24.8 million digits, it’s a long-ish number, but of course this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to memorize it. In fact, as Evelyn Lamb explains in Scientific American, it isn’t even that hard. Well, it’s a little hard. But it’s nothing compared to the effort of memorizing over 24 million digits, which is just too many digits for anyone to think about. Plus, it’s an excellent party trick for New Year’s parties—you can use it as a countdown, instead of the trite ten-second-to-midnight-routines. People will think you are a genius! Which, who’s to say you aren’t? So Lamb (who is clearly more likely than others to be a genius) starts her memorization trick by turning M82589933 into a binary number. 282,589,933-1, in binary, is a string of the number 1 repeated 82,589,933 times. 82,589,933 is easy enough to remember. To make it easier, Lamb suggests you memorize the sentence: “Cabbages in April besmirch September asparagus. And how!” The number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit of 82,589,933. Because not everyone is an actual genius, it might take you a minute to figure out what this actually means—just as it did my friend, who, of course, is me. So here is a handy guide: cabbages = eight letters = 8 in = two letters = 2 April = five letters = 5 besmirch = eight letters = 9 September = nine letters = 9 asparagus = nine letters = 9 and = three letters = 3 how = three letters = 3 That is: 82,599,933. Now, how do you keep track of how many ones have you written? Easy, says Lamb. Just memorize a series of words that are made of straight lines, like the word TWENTY NINE, which is made of 29 straight traits. That is: T= two straight lines = 11 W = four straight lines = 1111 E = four straight lines = 1111 N = three straight lines = 111 T = two straight lines = 11 Y = three straight lines = 111 N = three straight lines = 111 I = one straight line = 1 N = three straight lines = 111 E = four straight lines = 1111 TWENTY NINE = 11 1111 1111 111 11 111 111 1 111 1111 (that is 1 repeated 29 times. Probably.) Lamb created a poem that, when written in all caps, contains 500 straight lines. But you don’t need her poem: You can write your own 500-straight-lines poem! You can even write a poem with another number of straight lines—for instance, 677. You can write a poem made of 677 straight lines 122008 times, and then write 1 just 517 more times! You can start now and say it out loud and when you’re done it will be the next year! Happy 2019! (That is 11111100011, in binary. Thank you for asking.)

Each year, thousands of people worldwide use Jan. 1 as a reason to go sober through Dry January, or Drynuary, after the revelry of the holiday season passes. The idea of taking a break from drinking in January started to take off a few years ago. In 2012, the campaign was made official by the British charity Alcohol Change UK, although others, including John Ore from Business Insider, had been doing it for years. Now, a quick search of the hashtag #dryjanuary on Instagram shows almost 118,000 posts. There are already hundreds of #dryjanuary2019 pictures already up. Although there’s certainly no harm from taking a break from drinking alcohol—a known carcinogen—the broader health benefits of dry January may be more in your head than in your body. There are obvious short-term benefits that come from forgoing alcohol. Going sober can help improve sleep, and it saves both empty calories and money. There’s also preliminary evidence that a break from drinking can make small changes to the body: In 2013, a small group of 14 dedicated journalists at the British publication New Scientist conducted their own experiment, in which 10 of them quit drinking for five weeks. Some their subsequent bloodwork analyzed by a physician. Those who took a break saw their liver fat, a precursor to damage, decrease, as did their blood sugar, a measure of diabetes risk—although notably, none had been considered unhealthy before. That said, healthy adults don’t actually need a month to recover from holiday drinking. When we drink, the liver breaks down the majority of alcohol in our systems. While this process can result in the death of liver cells, the liver, like skin, regenerates quickly, Doug Simonetto, a heptologist at the Mayo Clinic, has told Quartz. (Just exactly how quickly is still unknown—Simonetto said that it would take actual liver biopsies at various points to be able to tell. But think of it like skin healing after a cut.) The liver can incur permanent damage if you routinely engage in heavy bouts of drinking without time to properly recover. This repetitive damage can lead to chronic and fatal liver diseases, including cancer. There’s also evidence that routine drinking of any amount can lead to other afflictions, like heart disease, and a number of other types of cancers. However, exactly how much drinking over what amount of time causes these outcomes is unclear: Self-reported observational studies have been unable to show if alcohol is a direct cause or if other factors in participants’ lives, like their age, occupation, or genetics. Dry January will certainly benefit your liver in the sense that you’re not harming it for a month, Simonetto explained. If you’re otherwise healthy, it may lower your risk for other diseases by a tiny amount, based on these observational studies that we have reported previously (although any benefit would matter more on how much you were drinking previously). The real benefit of Dry Janaury, though, comes from quitting the habit. For many of us, myself included, drinking moderately becomes something of a ritual. Winding down from the day? Have a glass of wine. Want to catch up with a friend? Grab a drink. Going on a date? Meet at a bar. In April of 2018, my colleague Jenni Avins took a month-long hiatus from drinking. She found it was difficult—and ultimately worth it. “My end-of-day default has been reset from ‘drinking’ to ‘not drinking,'” she wrote. “And there’s no denying that abstaining from alcohol is a simple way to improve sleep, cut calories, save money, and, of course, avoid hangovers.” Richard de Visser, a psychologist at the University of Sussex, has been working with the Alcohol Change UK to study the effects of Dry January. Although these studies rely on self-reported data of hundreds of adults, participants have reported drinking less (paywall) in the months following. According to a press release from the University of Sussex, results from the 2018 Dry January suggests that participants decreased the number of days they drank from about four days per week to three through August of the following year. Notably, though, these results didn’t include the standard margins of error typically shown in survey-based studies. Whether or not this change in habit is enough to provide any long-term benefits to the liver is unclear—but it’s certainly not harmful. Unless, of course, drinkers come into February drinking more to make up for it, James Ferguson, a liver specialist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham in England, told NPR in 2014. “I don’t think taking one month a year off alcohol makes any difference,” he said. “It’s more important to cut back generally.”

LAUREL, Md. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft has gone into orbit around an ancient asteroid, setting a pair of records. The Osiris-Rex spacecraft entered orbit Monday around the asteroid Bennu, 70 million miles (110 million kilometers) from Earth. It’s the smallest celestial body ever to be orbited by a spacecraft. Bennu is just 1,600 feet (500 meters) across. The spacecraft’s laps are barely a mile (1.6 kilometers) above the asteroid’s surface, another record. Osiris-Rex arrived at Bennu in early December and flew in formation with it until the latest maneuver. The goal is to grab gravel samples in 2020 for return to Earth in 2023. The New Year’s Eve milestone occurred just hours before another NASA explorer, New Horizons, was set to fly past an icy space rock beyond Pluto.

Just the thought of a bed bug infestation is enough to make you start scratching and tossing out furniture. A new app created by a researcher at Ohio State University has the answers and information on what to do next. The app funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set up as one-stop information source for everything bed bugs. There are guides for identifying and getting rid of them along with tips for travelers. Susan Jones, an entomologist at Ohio State, said the app was needed because there's a lot of misinformation out there about the critters. "If you don't know anything about an organism, then you are sort of at the mercy of that creature," said Jones, who has been studying bed bugs for about 10 years. The app works on Android and iOS devices and can be found by searching "bed bug field guide." Bed bugs can cause instant panic, but few people really know how to spot them or what to do, she said. There are right ways and wrong ways to get rid of them, she said, noting that most store-bought chemicals advertised as ways to eradicate bed bugs don't work. It's a job that should be handled by professionals, Jones said. Too often, people who can't afford to pay someone, try to do it themselves, she said. A year ago, a woman accidentally started a fire while trying to kill bed bugs with rubbing alcohol at a multi-family home in Cincinnati that left people homeless. That's just one—extreme—example of what can go wrong. Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, said bed bugs have been making a major resurgence and that while most people think of them when traveling, they are most often found in houses and apartments. The cost of eliminating bed bugs, Jones said, is a reason they continue to be a problem. They can reproduce quickly, can hide from floor to ceiling, and they're nocturnal, she said. "You don't know where they're hiding," Jones said.

Gulping down oysters has long been a favourite New Year's Eve ritual for the French, but as winters get warmer and summers get drier many growers worry there will soon be fewer of the prized mollusks to go around. "Twenty years ago, we'd be shivering in the warehouse while preparing the holiday orders. Today it's 15 degrees (60 Fahrenheit)," says Brittany oysterman Mathieu Le Moal, his sleeves rolled up in front of a tractor carrying dozens of bulging oyster sacks. "We don't have seasons anymore—but oysters need all four," Le Moal adds. "They need the winter, it's when they can rest, use less energy." Inside a wooden hanger redolent of salt and the sea, around a dozen of his workers are sorting, weighing and packing oysters into crates in the Brittany port of Cancale. Le Moal and other farmers along this stretch of France's Emerald Coast say the long drought which struck swathes of the country this summer took a heavy toll, leading to smaller harvests, and smaller shellfish. Without summer rains that wash crucial minerals into the oyster beds, "there's no plankton, the main food for oysters, so they don't grow," explained fellow oysterman Bertrand Racinne, weaving his way between baskets and stacked crates. "In the end, we have oysters but not enough of the big ones," said Racinne, who like most growers sells more than half his yearly production in December. Cold weather normally encourages a needed rest for oysters to mature, said Yoann Thomas of France's IRD research institute. Gulping down oysters has long been a favourite New Year's Eve ritual for the French Gulping down oysters has long been a favourite New Year's Eve ritual for the French But this winter has so far been unusually warm and, paradoxically, too rainy. Rains may bring minerals that favour plankton growth—but they also mean the mollusks spend too much energy eating. This year's harvest are likely to start the spring "fragile and vulnerable", warned Racinne. "We've found that periods of extreme mortality (more than 25 percent of oysters) come several months after mild and rainy winters," Thomas said. Germs thrive "Ten grams fewer for each one, that makes a difference in sales," said Philippe Le Gal, president of the CNC national shellfish producers' association. In 2017 the roughly 4,500 oyster growers in France sold 100,000 tons, at an average price of 5,000 euros ($5,700) per ton. "Oyster farmers will see volumes down by 20 to 30 percent this year," Le Gal said. "Climate warming is starting to have an impact." An oyster farmer in the Arcachon basin of south-west France readies to swallow an oyster in 1946 An oyster farmer in the Arcachon basin of south-west France readies to swallow an oyster in 1946 Warmer water temperatures are also a risk because they facilitate the spread of viruses that are especially harmful to oyster larvae, or spat, and young oysters. Scientists point in particular to a Herpes virus, OsHV-1, that has been present in French oyster waters since 1991 but has become more aggressive recently, for reasons still unknown. Since 2008, up to 75 percent of young oysters have been lost in some years, said Fabrice Pernet at the Ifremer ocean research institute in Brest. "Oyster farmers had found a solution by putting ten times the amount of spat in the water in autumn, when the virus is not active," Pernet said. But warmer waters would reduce this window of opportunity, he said, and new pathogens could arrive if carried north by fish and other sea life fleeing rising temperatures further south. Adding to the challenges, rising ocean acidity requires oysters to spend more energy in building their shells, Pernet said. 'Still magnificent' Erratic and extreme weather conditions are likely to become more frequent unless aggressive steps are taken to limit climate change caused by human activities, scientists warn. If weather patterns become increasingly volatile, French farmers might have to start changing their growing seasons or move thei If weather patterns become increasingly volatile, French farmers might have to start changing their growing seasons or move their beds north or further out to sea "By 2035 the abnormally high mortality episodes that currently occur every ten years risk happening every two years," Pernet said. Not every oyster farmer is convinced, however, saying the bigger risks are pollution, oyster beds that are becoming too densely packed and the increased use of genetically modified species. "Mortality rates change every year, depending on the region... but nobody can really explain why," said Alexandre Prod'homme, another grower in Cancale. But if warming and weather patterns become increasingly volatile, French farmers might have to start changing their growing seasons or move their beds north or further out to sea, Pernet said. "Oysters aren't going to disappear... but they're probably going to have to migrate," he predicted. For now, most growers say they're going to wait and see. "We're not sure about anything regarding the impact of global warming, we're waiting for more scientific research," said Daniel Coirier, president of the shellfish association for the Poitou-Charentes region. "But even if they're not as big, our oysters are still magnificent, and top quality!"

Former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn will be spending the beginning of 2019 behind bars after a Tokyo court on Monday extended his detention through to January 11. The move comes after Japanese prosecutors re-arrested Ghosn for fresh allegations on December 21, dashing his hopes of being home for Christmas. "The decision to extend the (detention period) was issued today. The detention expires on January 11," the Tokyo District Court said in a statement. The growing case against the auto tycoon represents a stunning reversal of fortune for a man once revered in Japan and beyond for his ability to turn around automakers, including Nissan. Since his stunning arrest on November 19, the twists and turns of the case have gripped Japan and the business world and shone a light on the Japanese legal system, which has come in for some criticism internationally. Authorities are pursuing three separate lines of enquiry against the 64-year-old Franco-Lebanese-Brazilian executive, involving alleged financial wrongdoing during his tenure as Nissan chief. They suspect he conspired with his right-hand man, US executive Greg Kelly, to hide away around half of his income (some five billion yen or $44 million) over five fiscal years from 2010. They also allege he under-reported his salary to the tune of four billion yen over the next three fiscal years—apparently to avoid criticism that his pay was too high. The extension that prosecutors won Monday allows them to continue investigating a complex third claim that alleges Ghosn sought to shift a personal investment loss onto Nissan's books. As part of that scheme, he is also accused of having used Nissan funds to repay a Saudi acquaintance who put up collateral money. Prosecutors have pressed formal charges over the first allegation but not yet over the other accusations. 'Cup noodle' Monday's extension deals a new blow to Ghosn's hopes of being released from the Tokyo detention centre where he has been held since his shock arrest. Earlier this month, he appeared on the verge of winning bail after a court rejected a request from prosecutors to extend his detention on the second allegation against him. But by filing the new claims, prosecutors were able to restart the clock on his detention. The once jet-setting executive, who denies any wrongdoing, was initially held in a tiny single cell but has now reportedly been moved to a more comfortable room. He has complained about the cold and the rice-based menu, sources say, though he has told embassy visitors he is being well-treated although he has shed a lot of weight. According to the Asahi Shimbun daily, Ghosn will be offered cup noodles on New Year's Eve—based on the Japanese tradition of eating noodles at the turn of the year to wish for a long life. He will reportedly be allowed access to his lawyers on January 2 and 3, which are both Japanese holidays. 'Dark side' While he has failed to win bail, his alleged accomplice Kelly won a court-ordered release on Christmas Day. Kelly's bail conditions prevent him from leaving Japan, and he is reportedly now seeking treatment for a spinal condition at a Japanese hospital. Ghosn's lengthy detention has sparked criticism, especially from abroad, but Japanese prosecutors have defended the legal system, which allows suspects to be "re-arrested" several times over different allegations. And his arrest has laid bare tensions in the alliance he helped forge between Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors and France's Renault. While Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors swiftly ousted Ghosn from his leadership posts after his arrest, Renault has responded more cautiously to the allegations. The French firm has also repeatedly called on Nissan to hold a shareholders meeting, and is reportedly seeking increased representation on the board of the Japanese automaker. Nissan has rejected the calls for a shareholder meeting at this stage, and says it is waiting until a commission looking into governance at the firm releases its findings. The Japanese automaker has also so far failed to agree on who should succeed Ghosn as chairman. While the tycoon was once so beloved for his role in turning around Nissan that he was immortalised in manga comic form, his former colleagues have since harshly criticised him. Nissan's CEO Hiroto Saikawa, a one-time Ghosn protege, has accused his former boss of accruing too much power and referred to his tenure's "dark side."

A lion attacked and killed a young American woman who had just started working at the facility where it was kept, the center said Sunday. Alexandra Black, 22, was passionate about wildlife and had worked just 10 days as in intern at the facility in Burlington, North Carolina. "The Conservators Center is devastated by the loss of a human life today," it said in a statement. "While a husbandry team led by a professionally trained animal keeper was carrying out a routine enclosure cleaning, one of the lions somehow left a locked space and entered the space the humans were in and quickly killed one person. "It is unclear at this time how the lion left the locked enclosure. At no time did the lion ever enter a space that was not enclosed by the park's perimeter fence," the statement added, expressing its condolences to Black's family and announcing it would close temporarily. The lion was killed so Black could be retrieved, the center said. Black, a recent graduate of Indiana University, had worked a few weeks at the facility home to dozens of animals and 21 different species, its website says.

A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule some four billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away. The US space agency will ring in the New Year with a live online broadcast to mark historic flyby of the mysterious object in a dark and frigid region of space known as the Kuiper Belt at 12:33 am January 1 (0533 GMT Tuesday). A guitar anthem recorded by legendary Queen guitarist Brian May—who also holds an advanced degree in astrophysics—will be released just after midnight to accompany a video simulation of the flyby, as NASA commentators describe the close pass on www.nasa.gov/nasalive. Real-time video of the actual flyby is impossible, since it takes more six hours for a signal sent from Earth to reach the spaceship, named New Horizons, and another six hours for the response to arrive. But if all goes well, the first images should be in hand by the end of New Year's Day. And judging by the latest tweet from Alan Stern, the lead scientist on the New Horizons mission, the excitement among team members is palpable. "IT'S HAPPENING!! Flyby is upon us! @NewHorizons2015 is healthy and on course! The farthest exploration of worlds in history!" he wrote on Saturday. What does it look like? Scientists are not sure what Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee) looks like—whether it is round or oblong or even if it is a single object or a cluster. It was discovered in 2014 with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is believed to be 12-20 miles (20-30 kilometers) in size. Scientists decided to study it with New Horizons after the spaceship, which launched in 2006, completed its main mission of flying by Pluto in 2015, returning the most detailed images ever taken of the dwarf planet. "At closest approach we are going to try to image Ultima at three times the resolution we had for Pluto," said Stern. "If we can accomplish that it will be spectacular." Hurtling through space at a speed of 32,000 miles (51,500 kilometers) per hour, the spacecraft aims to make its closest approach within 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of the surface of Ultima Thule. The flyby will be fast, at a speed of nine miles (14 kilometers) per second. Seven instruments on board will record high-resolution images and gather data about its size and composition. Ultima Thule is named for a mythical, far-northern island in medieval literature and cartography, according to NASA. "Ultima Thule means 'beyond Thule'—beyond the borders of the known world—symbolizing the exploration of the distant Kuiper Belt and Kuiper Belt objects that New Horizons is performing, something never before done," the US space agency said in a statement. According to project scientist Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, mankind didn't even know the Kuiper Belt—a vast ring of relics from the formation days of the solar system— existed until the 1990s. "This is the frontier of planetary science," said Weaver. "We finally have reached the outskirts of the solar system, these things that have been there since the beginning and have hardly changed—we think. We will find out." Despite the partial US government shutdown, sparked by a feud over funding for a border wall with Mexico between President Donald Trump and opposition Democrats, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine vowed that the US space agency would broadcast the flyby. Normally, NASA TV and NASA's website would go dark during a government shutdown. NASA will also provide updates about another spacecraft, called OSIRIS-REx, that will enter orbit around the asteroid Bennu on New Year's Eve, Bridenstine said.

Sabra Purdy is just back from Joshua Tree National Park in southern California, which was crammed with tourists. It is high season, and to prevent chaos from the partial shutdown of the US federal government, she put on her gloves, cleaned toilets and picked up trash. The 40-year-old businesswoman joined other members of the business community who benefit from park-related tourism, and together they performed some serious maintenance in the 790,737-acre (320,000-hectare) park while waiting for politicians in faraway Washington to end their budget impasse. The shutdown began on December 22, with Congress at loggerheads over whether to include the $5 billion sought by Donald Trump to fund a wall on the border with Mexico, a central pillar of his election campaign and of his presidency. The result: hundreds of thousands of federal workers were sent home without pay, including 21,383 employees of the National Park Service (NPS), responsible for 418 facilities nationwide, including national parks, monuments, historic sites and even the White House. But most parks were left open, and without the usual entry fee. "In the long run, the rangers who work here are committed to preserve the area and just their mere presence probably keeps things from happening that shouldn't," said Sherman Craig, who was visiting Joshua Tree from New York. A Park Service statement issued for a shutdown earlier in the year laid out a bare-bones plan. "The NPS will not operate parks during the shutdown—no visitor services will be provided," it said. "NPS will cease providing visitor services, including restrooms, trash collection, facilities and roads maintenance (including plowing), campground reservation and check-in/check-out services, backcountry and other permits and public information." The time between Christmas and New Year's is among Joshua Tree park's busiest The time between Christmas and New Year's is among Joshua Tree park's busiest That is where the community around Joshua Tree came in, determined to help keep the magic in the air. The Sonora and Mojave deserts meet on the park's west side, amid a spectacular backdrop of rocky mountains, boulders and a type of cactus called the Joshua Tree that gives the area its name. Disorder but 'no chaos' Since the shutdown began, dozens of volunteers have been traveling to the park to clean overused bathrooms, remove mounting piles of garbage and carry out other, equally unfragrant work. Purdy, who eight years ago opened a tour company for climbing trips with her husband Seth Zaharias, said that when she arrived at Joshua Tree on Friday she found disorder but "no chaos." There were "a lot of people with dogs where they shouldn't be, camping where they shouldn't be. But it could certainly be much worse," she said. "Unfortunately, this isn't the first shutdown, and probably not the last." Volunteers often take the opportunity to guide tourists and explain the rules about protecting the park's precious and delicate ecosystem—rules often flouted during the shutdown. Local businesses started organizing their fairly informal grouping even as Congress was failing yet again to get its budget deal done. A 2013 government shutdown was devastating for businesses dependent on tourism to the Joshua Tree park A 2013 government shutdown was devastating for businesses dependent on tourism to the Joshua Tree park All supplies for the effort come from the pocket of local businessmen, though some donations are starting to arrive from other park lovers. Striving for 'normalcy' "There are about 150 latrines in the park. And I estimate that we have distributed more than 500 rolls of paper; I do not think we have reached all the bathrooms, only the most important ones," said John Lauretig, executive director of the NGO Friends of Joshua Tree National Park, which is helping coordinate while also working to protect local wildlife. "We are trying our best to maintain normalcy, but you know, we don't really have the authority or the power or the ability to stop people from doing really egregious acts: driving off-road, or chopping down trees or stealing artifacts. "I haven't seen any of that. But you know the potential is there," he said. On Twitter, someone posting as "Defend Joshua Tree" decried an "absolutely ridiculous" breakdown of conditions in the park—with trash piling up, people driving off-road and even stringing Christmas lights between delicate Joshua Tree cacti. The poster called for the park to be closed until the budget showdown ends. But for Purdy, Lauretig and many others dependent on tourism, that would be the worst possible turn of events: the time between Christmas and New Year's is among the park's busiest. When the park was shuttered for 17 days in 2013, "it was devastating for us financially," Purdy said. Lauretig shared the concern. The partial shutdown of the federal government has left more than 21,000 national park staff off work with no pay The partial shutdown of the federal government has left more than 21,000 national park staff off work with no pay "Back in 2013 when the park was closed and people were not visiting, the local restaurants and the local community were laying people off. They were sending people home because there just wasn't any money or visitors," he said. In the current shutdown, some US parks have closed completely, while others operate partially. In California, the popular Death Valley and Channel Islands national parks remain open. "The national parks are just something we're happy to pay for, you know," said Ivy Weiskopf, a visitor from Oakland, California. "We think it's very important to preserve this land and make sure that it's well taken care of and it's not being overrun by we, humans... And we're gonna send a check!" At Joshua Tree, the coming days are expected to bring a surge of tourists, with zero official staff to greet—or police—them. In December 2017, the park welcomed 285,493 visitors. This year, there have been 2.4 million through November this year. "I wish the government was just able to function and that we could have the parks staff," said Purdy. "Because we need them."

Parts of the United States were digging out Saturday from winter storms that media reports said led to at least seven deaths, while warmer regions braced for potential flooding during the New Year's travel period. Hardest hit were parts of the northern Plains, the upper Midwest, and a southwestern region from Arizona to western Texas. As storm clouds moved east, they were set to bring heavy rain and probably flooding to the Gulf Coast, and both rain and freezing rain to New England. Flight tracker FlightAware reported more than 129 flight cancellations and 1,006 delays Saturday—down from more than 500 cancelations and 5,700 delays on Friday—as the winter storm hit north-central and Midwestern states with up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) of snow. In the southwestern state of New Mexico, forecasters called for up to 18 inches, with temperatures far below normal, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. Southeastern states braced for a deluge of rain, and millions in the South were warned of potential flooding. Mother Nature's wrath Biloxi, Mississippi was soaked with five inches of rain. Tallahassee, Florida braced for three inches or more of rain just a week after being hit by eight inches, adding to fears of flooding, the Tallahassee Democrat reported. The weather contributed to several deaths during the week. A 58-year-old woman in Louisiana was killed Wednesday when a tree struck by lightning fell on her home, according to TV station WDSU. In Kansas, police said icy roads caused a fatal car crash Thursday on an interstate highway. A crash Thursday involving a snowplow and a pickup truck in Dunn County, North Dakota, claimed the life of the 37-year-old truck driver, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press newspaper reported. A 17-year-old boy in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was killed in a two-car collision that police blamed on icy roads, the Des Moines Register reported. Kansas, pictured here in 2013, was struck again with severe weather that police say caused a fatal car crash Kansas, pictured here in 2013, was struck again with severe weather that police say caused a fatal car crash A woman on a camping trip in Tennessee died when she was swept away by flood waters while trying to cross a creek, CNN reported. It said two people died in weather-related collisions in Minnesota, one when a pedestrian was struck by a snowplow blade in Crow Wing County amid poor visibility. Numerous roads were closed Thursday in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Kansas and Iowa, but by Saturday crews were making progress clearing affected areas. TV channel KWCH in Wichita, Kansas said on Saturday that safe travel conditions had finally been restored across that state. But the South Dakota Department of Transportation said warnings against travel remained in effect there. "Roads are icy, blowing snow is still limiting visibility," the agency said. "Crews are working but Mother Nature is making safe travel tough." North Dakota on Friday lifted a no-travel advisory that had been issued for the entire east side of the state, even as drifting snow continued to frustrate drivers. NWS officials in Minnesota cautioned that roads were cloaked in snow, with some areas receiving as much as 16.5 inches. The weather service predicted the treacherous weather would continue through the weekend in many parts of the country. Winter weather advisories were in effect Saturday for northern Indiana and southern Michigan. To the south, heavy rains were forecast in the central Gulf Coast, in the Florida Panhandle, and stretching east to the mid-Atlantic. Not all of the country suffered, though. The capital Washington enjoyed blue skies and a temperature around 57F (14C) on Saturday.

Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York and at the City College of New York (CCNY) have developed a metamaterial that can transport sound in unusually robust ways along its edges and localize it at its corners. According to a new paper published today in Nature Materials, the newly engineered material creates a robust acoustic structure that can control in unusual ways the propagation and localization of sound even when fabrication imperfections exist. This unique property may improve technologies that use sound waves, such as sonars and ultrasound devices, making them more resistant to defects. The research is a collaboration between the labs of Alexander Khanikaev, a professor in the electrical engineering and physics departments at CCNY who is also affiliated with the ASRC, and of Andrea Alù, director of the ASRC's Photonics Initiative. Their advance is based on work that brought a field of mathematics called topology into the materials science world. Topology studies properties of an object that are not affected by continuous deformations. For instance, a donut is topologically equivalent to a plastic straw, as they both have one hole. One could be molded into the other by stretching and deforming the object, and without tearing it or adding new holes. Using topological principles, researchers predicted and later discovered topological insulators—special materials that conduct electric currents only on their edges, not in the bulk. Their unusual conduction properties stem from the topology of their electronic band gap, and they are therefore unusually resistant to continuous changes, such as disorder, noise or imperfections. "There has been a lot of interest in trying to extend these ideas from electric currents to other types of signal transport, in particular to the fields of topological photonics and topological acoustics," Alù says. "What we are doing is building special acoustic materials that can guide and localize sound in very unusual ways." To design their novel acoustic metamaterial, the team 3-D-printed a series of small trimers, arranged and connected in a triangular lattice. Each trimer unit consisted of three acoustic resonators. The rotational symmetry of the trimers, and the generalized chiral symmetry of the lattice, gave the structure unique acoustic properties that stem from the topology of their acoustic bandgap. The acoustic modes of the resonators hybridized, giving rise to an acoustic band structure for the whole object. As a result, when sound is played at frequencies outside the band gap it can propagate through the bulk of the material. But when sound is played at frequencies inside the band gap, it can only travel along the triangle's edges or be localized at its corners. This property, Alù says, is not affected by disorder or fabrication errors. "You could completely remove a corner, and whatever is left will form the lattice's new corner, and it will still work in a similar way, because of the robustness of these properties," Alù said To break these properties, researchers had to reduce the symmetry of the material by, for example, changing the coupling between resonator units, which changes the topology of the band structure and thus changes the material's properties. "We have been the first to build a topological metamaterial for sound supporting different forms of topological localization, along its edges and at its corners.", Khanikaev said. "We also demonstrated that advanced fabrication techniques based on 3-D printed acoustic elements can realize geometries of arbitrary complexity in a simple and flexible platform, opening disruptive opportunities in the field of acoustic materials. We have been recently working on even more complex 3-D metamaterial designs based on these techniques, which will further expand the properties of acoustic materials and expand capabilities of acoustic devices". "We're showing, fundamentally, that it is possible to enable new forms of sound transport that are much more robust than what we are used to. These findings may find applications in ultrasound imaging, underwater acoustics and sonar technology," Alù said.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have recorded, for the first time, the "temporal coherence" of a graphene qubit—meaning how long it can maintain a special state that allows it to represent two logical states simultaneously. The demonstration, which used a new kind of graphene-based qubit, represents a critical step forward for practical quantum computing, the researchers say. Superconducting quantum bits (simply, qubits) are artificial atoms that use various methods to produce bits of quantum information, the fundamental component of quantum computers. Similar to traditional binary circuits in computers, qubits can maintain one of two states corresponding to the classic binary bits, a 0 or 1. But these qubits can also be a superposition of both states simultaneously, which could allow quantum computers to solve complex problems that are practically impossible for traditional computers. The amount of time that these qubits stay in this superposition state is referred to as their "coherence time." The longer the coherence time, the greater the ability for the qubit to compute complex problems. Recently, researchers have been incorporating graphene-based materials into superconducting quantum computing devices, which promise faster, more efficient computing, among other perks. Until now, however, there's been no recorded coherence for these advanced qubits, so there's no knowing if they're feasible for practical quantum computing. In a paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers demonstrate, for the first time, a coherent qubit made from graphene and exotic materials. These materials enable the qubit to change states through voltage, much like transistors in today's traditional computer chips—and unlike most other types of superconducting qubits. Moreover, the researchers put a number to that coherence, clocking it at 55 nanoseconds, before the qubit returns to its ground state. The work combined expertise from co-authors William D. Oliver, a physics professor of the practice and Lincoln Laboratory Fellow whose work focuses on quantum computing systems, and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at MIT who researches innovations in graphene. "Our motivation is to use the unique properties of graphene to improve the performance of superconducting qubits," says first author Joel I-Jan Wang, a postdoc in Oliver's group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at MIT. "In this work, we show for the first time that a superconducting qubit made from graphene is temporally quantum coherent, a key requisite for building more sophisticated quantum circuits. Ours is the first device to show a measurable coherence time—a primary metric of a qubit—that's long enough for humans to control." There are 14 other co-authors, including Daniel Rodan-Legrain, a graduate student in Jarillo-Herrero's group who contributed equally to the work with Wang; MIT researchers from RLE, the Department of Physics, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Lincoln Laboratory; and researchers from the Laboratory of Irradiated Solids at the École Polytechnique and the Advanced Materials Laboratory of the National Institute for Materials Science. A pristine graphene sandwich Superconducting qubits rely on a structure known as a "Josephson junction," where an insulator (usually an oxide) is sandwiched between two superconducting materials (usually aluminum). In traditional tunable qubit designs, a current loop creates a small magnetic field that causes electrons to hop back and forth between the superconducting materials, causing the qubit to switch states. But this flowing current consumes a lot of energy and causes other issues. Recently, a few research groups have replaced the insulator with graphene, an atom-thick layer of carbon that's inexpensive to mass produce and has unique properties that might enable faster, more efficient computation. To fabricate their qubit, the researchers turned to a class of materials, called van der Waals materials—atomic-thin materials that can be stacked like Legos on top of one another, with little to no resistance or damage. These materials can be stacked in specific ways to create various electronic systems. Despite their near-flawless surface quality, only a few research groups have ever applied van der Waals materials to quantum circuits, and none have previously been shown to exhibit temporal coherence. For their Josephson junction, the researchers sandwiched a sheet of graphene in between the two layers of a van der Waals insulator called hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Importantly, graphene takes on the superconductivity of the superconducting materials it touches. The selected van der Waals materials can be made to usher electrons around using voltage, instead of the traditional current-based magnetic field. Therefore, so can the graphene—and so can the entire qubit. When voltage gets applied to the qubit, electrons bounce back and forth between two superconducting leads connected by graphene, changing the qubit from ground (0) to excited or superposition state (1). The bottom hBN layer serves as a substrate to host the graphene. The top hBN layer encapsulates the graphene, protecting it from any contamination. Because the materials are so pristine, the traveling electrons never interact with defects. This represents the ideal "ballistic transport" for qubits, where a majority of electrons move from one superconducting lead to another without scattering with impurities, making a quick, precise change of states. How voltage helps The work can help tackle the qubit "scaling problem," Wang says. Currently, only about 1,000 qubits can fit on a single chip. Having qubits controlled by voltage will be especially important as millions of qubits start being crammed on a single chip. "Without voltage control, you'll also need thousands or millions of current loops too, and that takes up a lot of space and leads to energy dissipation," he says. Additionally, voltage control means greater efficiency and a more localized, precise targeting of individual qubits on a chip, without "cross talk." That happens when a little bit of the magnetic field created by the current interferes with a qubit it's not targeting, causing computation problems. For now, the researchers' qubit has a brief lifetime. For reference, conventional superconducting qubits that hold promise for practical application have documented coherence times of a few tens of microseconds, a few hundred times greater than the researchers' qubit. But the researchers are already addressing several issues that cause this short lifetime, most of which require structural modifications. They're also using their new coherence-probing method to further investigate how electrons move ballistically around the qubits, with aims of extending the coherence of qubits in general.

"In Japan, a robot may create a new way to mourn," reports one Colorado news team: This robot is supposed to sound like a loved one. Now imagine the same robot having a 3D-printed mask of their face. You will be able to stay with that robot for 49 days which is the period of mourning after the funeral in Japan. That is the concept of Digital Shaman project, which uses a humanoid. Users will have an interview with the artist while they're alive. Their physical characteristics and messages will be recorded then. After the user dies, the bereaved ones will be able to install the program into the robot. It mimics the deceased one's personality, speech, and gestures. The robot can imitate hand and head movements the person was making during the interview.... As unreal as it may seem, the artist is planning to sell digital shaman to the public in the future. People may wonder if the creator is planning to allow the deceased to live forever through the program. She's not. "I think it will seriously hinder those left behind to move on." We live in a digital world. And now a robot has brought together "IT technology" and "Death". It's part of a larger research project on Japanese funeral rites, and one of a series of works on "digital shamanism" that "attempt to blend Japanese folk beliefs with technology." An artist's statement calls it "a new mode of mourning in keeping with the technical advances of today."

An anonymous reader quotes Neowin: Every time Microsoft releases a Windows 10 feature update, it runs some efficiency tests to prove that its Edge browser is significantly faster than the competition, which includes Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Then the company posts the detailed results on its Windows blog and YouTube channel, boasting about the power efficiency of its browser. Even though the company still has run battery tests, it has remained strangely silent about them, posting about it on GitHub only. While many thought that Microsoft's silence on the matter was due to Edge finally losing to the competition, it appears that this is not the case. As spotted by Paul Thurrott, Microsoft has indeed run efficiency tests for Edge in Windows 10 version 1809, pitting it against the likes of Firefox and Chrome. Through these tests, the company has concluded that Edge lasts 24% longer than Chrome and a massive 94% longer than Firefox on average. "While Edge appears to have won these efficiency tests easily as well, it is likely that the company did not decide to promote this achievement -- as it has always done previously -- because of the planned abandonment of EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium," the article concludes.

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this article from New York magazine: In late November, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against eight people accused of fleecing advertisers of $36 million in two of the largest digital ad-fraud operations ever uncovered... Hucksters infected 1.7 million computers with malware that remotely directed traffic to "spoofed" websites.... ots "faked clicks, mouse movements, and social network login information to masquerade as engaged human consumers." Some were sent to browse the internet to gather tracking cookies from other websites, just as a human visitor would have done through regular behavior. Fake people with fake cookies and fake social-media accounts, fake-moving their fake cursors, fake-clicking on fake websites -- the fraudsters had essentially created a simulacrum of the internet, where the only real things were the ads. How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was "bots masquerading as people," a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube's systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event "the Inversion...." [N]ot even Facebook, the world's greatest data-gathering organization, seems able to produce genuine figures. In October, small advertisers filed suit against the social-media giant, accusing it of covering up, for a year, its significant overstatements of the time users spent watching videos on the platform (by 60 to 80âpercent, Facebook says; by 150 to 900 percent, the plaintiffs say). According to an exhaustive list at MarketingLand, over the past two years Facebook has admitted to misreporting the reach of posts on Facebook Pages (in two different ways), the rate at which viewers complete ad videos, the average time spent reading its "Instant Articles," the amount of referral traffic from Facebook to external websites, the number of views that videos received via Facebook's mobile site, and the number of video views in Instant Articles. On Twitter the author also shared a Twitter thread by the Washington Post's director of advertising technology, who shares his own complaints about the ecosystem of online advertising. "The problem isn't just that the internet is full of fakery and bullshit and bad numbers and malfunctioning metrics and bullshitters and fraudsters. The problem is that all the fake shit is layered on top of other fake shit and it just COMPOUNDS itself... Like you get fake users, who get autoplay videos which no one is really watching.... "That's not even counting the entire ad campaigns that are fake where the product is just a bullshit excuse to collect data on you."

An anonymous reader quotes MIT's Technology Review: Silicon Valley loves the idea of universal basic income. Many in the tech elites tout it as the answer to job losses caused by automation, if only people would give it a chance.... Getting people on board with basic income requires data, which is what numerous tests have been trying to obtain. But this year, a number of experiments were cut short, delayed, or ended after a short time. That also means the possible data supply got cut off. Back in June we declared, "Basic income could work -- if you do it Canada style." We talked to the people on the ground getting the checks in Ontario's 4,000-person test and saw how it was changing the community. Then, just two months later, it was announced that the program is ending in the new year rather than running for three years. The last checks will be delivered to participants in March 2019. The article complains that in addition, Finland's test program ended this year after its initial trial period, while Y Combinator's experiment "has also faced more delays, pushing the experiment into 2019," saying these programs illustrate the three basic issues faced by basic income tests. First, there's political disagreements. ("The Ontario program was shut down by the province's newly installed Conservative government.") Then there's also concerns about funding -- "As you might imagine, giving away free money is expensive" -- and also fears about disrupting existing benefits "To avoid that, they've had to work with municipal and state agencies to get waivers for pilot recipients. But getting those waivers takes a lot of time and bureaucracy.... "The only way the idea can ever be embraced on any sort of large-scale, meaningful level is with more data and bigger tests. Without that, no matter how much support it gets from Silicon Valley, it seems unlikely that the public, at least in the US, will ever come around."

Wave723 quotes IEEE Spectrum: On New Year's Eve, millions of people will use Facebook's Messenger app to wish friends and family a 'Happy New Year!' If everything goes smoothly, those messages will reach recipients in fewer than 100 milliseconds, and life will go on. But if the service stalls or fails, a small team of software engineers based in the company's New York City office will have to answer for it. The article says the team "tested and tweaked the app throughout the year and will soon face their biggest annual performance exam," since Messenger's 1.3 billion monthly active users send more messages on New Year's Eve than any other day of the year. Many of them hit "send" at the exact moment when their clock strikes midnight, "and people often try to resend messages that don't appear to make it through right away, which piles on more requests." The solution appears to be load testing, re-directing traffic, message batching, and discarding "read receipts" and temporarily disabling other minor Facebook functions -- or, more generally, what their engineering manager describes as "graceful degradation."

"What's the worst that can happen?" thought Nicko Feinberg last December when he listed his house on Airbnb. The listing explicitly said no parties. Then a request came through to book the house for one night on New Year's Day. It was from a young man, probably in his early 20s. He had one review but it was terrific.... I picked up my boys and we stayed down the road at my mother's apartment... When I got back [the next day] I saw three or four cars in the driveway. I threw my food down and knew I was screwed. Inside there were about 12 young adults, all trying to clean. The floors looked like someone had poured Jagermeister and champagne everywhere and then danced on them. Everything seemed wrong: my artwork was not on the walls; there was furniture missing; the glass panel on my staircase was shattered; even the floor didn't seem level any more. Then I noticed they were using my best sheets and towels as mops....I told them no one was leaving and I called the police and Airbnb. When a police officer turned up, he said it was a civil matter, before adding: "We were here last night...." Ultimately, it was just stuff and I knew it would be OK. But I felt a massive disappointment in humanity. That night, it wasn't hard for me and my boys to find Instagram pictures and videos of the party. It was horrifying to see so many people in the house, jumping up and down on the furniture and windowsills. They broke my hot tub and tiles in the bathroom; when I looked in the rubbish bags, I saw all my drinks bottles empty, as well as broken glasses and towels. I found an image online of the invite that said, "Mansion Party" with my address. There had been 300 people there. Boys were charged to enter; girls got in free. While he won't disclose what Airbnb paid him for the damage, "a year later repairs are continuing. The floor is still uneven." But he told one local news channel that the damage was over $100,000, adding "There's footprints on my bathroom walls." At one point more than 100 cars had been parked outside, according to a police report, and the 23-year-old was ultimately charged with "disorderly conduct". He also was banned permanently from Airbnb -- which said in a statement that "negative incidents are incredibly rare."

Three-quarters of Canadians own smartphones-- and 94% of 15- to 34-year-olds. But this week the Globe and Mail profiled "digital refuseniks" who are "deliberately logging off -- and they say it's done wonders for their imaginations and peace of mind." They are hidden among us, neither jobless nor friendless, and living quite happily. Cut off from Uber, yet somehow thriving. For example, Tony North does not live for his smartphone, because he's never had one. "I just didn't want to get into the habit of distraction," he says simply, in an interview conducted over landline from his home in Paris, Ontario. The high-school teacher spends about 20 minutes a day [on his laptop] on his one social-media platform, Facebook, which he uses to keep in touch with family back home in Australia. In fact, you could blame Australia for Mr. North's desire to be digitally unleashed: He remembers leaving home to travel overseas, and the wonderful feeling of being uncontactable that came with it. "It was such a feeling of freedom, and I guess I wanted to keep a bit of that." As a teacher of English and drama, Mr. North, 53, is worried about the consequences of teenagers' near-constant devotion to their online lives (his own two children, 12 and 13 years old, do not have phones). In drama class, he makes his students put away their phones and engage in face-to-face exercises: "I'm basically forcing them to interact," he says. "When I ask for evaluations at the end of the semester, it's one of the things they most seem to appreciate...." Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 spend nearly five hours a day online, according to a 2017 survey from Media Technology Monitor... "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?" the Atlantic magazine asked last year in a cover story designed to keep parents up at night, frozen in the blue light of further bad news. North says in the extra time "he reads many novels and enjoys quiet moments of reflection and watching the world go by." And 18-year-old Bethany March is also severely limiting her phone use. ''I saw the way that people got so invested, not just in their phones, but in social media, and I didn't want to be that person," she says. "So many times people would be zeroed in on their phones. It was just rude, to be honest. I'd think, 'I'm here with you, talk to me.'" 71-year-old John Moir insists that living without a smartphone makes him really experience new locations, "rather than trying to be in two places at once," adding that "Whenever I tell people I don't have a phone, they say, 'Oh, that's so great. I wish I didn't have to have one.'" That's "one thing digital refuseniks never have to worry about," the article concludes: "Who is the servant in their digital relationship, and who is the master."

YouTube's controversial year-end "Rewind" video has become "the most-loathed video in the entire history of YouTube," reports Inc., adding that with 14 million down votes, it now "might just be the most-hated video anybody ever posted anywhere." "But then came Christmas Day, and YouTube apparently managed to top its own blunder." How? By uploading a promo video wishing viewers a Merry Christmas on Twitter. The problem: YouTube allegedly didn't own the video. Instead, it copied a YouTube user's video and reposted it as its own, without so much as offering credit....The only real difference between the version of video that YouTuber Lily Hevesh created and uploaded to YouTube, and the one that YouTube reportedly passed off as its own work in a post on Twitter is that YouTube's version on Twitter skipped the opening 20 seconds. That would be the part in which Hevesh, who describes herself as a "domino artist," shared her logo and a short clip of herself setting up the dominoes. Hevesh caught what YouTube had apparently done about 14 hours after the post, and tweeted a response: "Very glad to see that my Christmas domino e-card is getting good use. However, I'm a bit disappointed that YouTube would take my video and re-upload it with absolutely no credit. People rip off my work everyday and it's honestly saddening to see this happen by YouTube itself...." Even if money weren't involved, YouTube's own terms of service and copyright page seem to ban exactly what it looks like was done here. It's a mess. In the end, YouTube owned up to its mistake -- well, partway anyway. It tweeted a follow-up on the day after Christmas, acknowledging that they "forgot to credit @Hevesh5 for this video!" and linking to Hevesh's YouTube page. The Verge points out that YouTube "does own a limited license to people's videos, so legally, the company can take Hevesh's content and upload it to its Twitter account. The problem is ethical.... "Reuploading video while stripping credit is a practice that YouTube explicitly condemns. YouTube's community guidelines and policy page specifically states that creators should only 'upload videos that you made or that you're authorized to use.'"

"It's as dystopian as it sounds," opines The Verge: Chinese schools are now tracking the exact location of their students using chip-equipped "smart uniforms" in order to encourage better attendance rates, according to a report from state-run newspaper The Global Times. Each uniform has two chips in the shoulders which are used to track when and where the students enter or exit the school, with an added dose of facial recognition software at the entrances to make sure that the right student is wearing the right outfit (so you can't just have your friend, say, wear an extra shirt while you go off and play hooky). Try to leave during school hours? An alarm will go off.... There are additional features, too, according to a report from The Epoch Times: the chips can apparently detect when a student has fallen asleep in class, and allow students to make payments (using additional facial or fingerprint recognition to confirm the purchase). The uniforms are being used in 10 schools in China's Guizhou Province region, and apparently have been in use for some time -- according to Lin Zongwu, principal of No. 11 School of Renhuai, over 800 students in his school have been wearing the smart uniforms since 2016.