Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from the New York Times: Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam's harbor [in the Netherlands] is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe. Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spewing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today... [A]lready the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. A top executive at the world's leading wind farm developer called it a "bit of a leapfrog over the latest technology." And an analyst said the machine's size and advance sales had "shaken the industry." The prototype is the first of a generation of new machines that are about a third more powerful than the largest already in commercial service. As such, it is changing the business calculations of wind equipment makers, developers and investors. The G.E. machines will have a generating capacity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes.

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Mozilla is "investigating" a design refresh for its Firefox browser. Ghacks reports that the refresh is referred to internally as "Photon." Information about the design refresh is limited at this point in time. Mozilla created a meta bug on Bugzilla as a reference to keep track of the changes. While there are not any mockups or screenshots posted on the site, the names of the bugs provide information on the elements that will get a refresh. These are: - The Firefox address bar and tabs bar. - The main Firefox menu. - Infobars. - Doorhangers. - Context Menus. - Modals. Most user interface elements are listed in the meta bug. Mozilla plans to release the new design in Firefox 89; the browser is scheduled for a mid-2021 release. Its release date is set to May 18, 2021... [Developer/Firefox extension author] Sören Hentzschel revealed that he saw some of the Firefox Proton mockups... He notes that Firefox will look more modern when the designs land and that Mozilla plans to introduce useful improvements, especially in regards to the user experience. Hentzschel mentions two examples of potential improvements to the user experience: a mockup that displays vertical tabs in a compact mode, and another that shows the grouping of tabs on the tab bar.

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Long-time programmer/researcher/former MIT research fellow Jonathan Edwards writes a blog called "Alarming Development: Dispatches from the User Liberation Front." He began the new year by arguing that software "is eating the world. But progress in software technology itself largely stalled around 1996." Slashdot reader tonique summarizes Edwards' argument: In 1996 there were "LISP, Algol, Basic, APL, Unix, C, Oracle, Smalltalk, Windows, C++, LabView, HyperCard, Mathematica, Haskell, WWW, Python, Mosaic, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Flash, Postgress [sic]". After that we're supposed to have achieved "IntelliJ, Eclipse, ASP, Spring, Rails, Scala, AWS, Clojure, Heroku, V8, Go, React, Docker, Kubernetes, Wasm". Edwards's main thesis is that the Internet boom around 1996 caused this slowdown because programmers could get rich quick. Then smart and ambitious people moved into Silicon Valley, and founded startups. But you can't do research at a startup due to time and money constraints. Today only "megacorps" like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are supposedly able to do relevant research because of their vast resources. Computer science wouldn't help, either, because "most of our software technology was built in companies" and because computer science "strongly disincentivizes risky long-range research". Further, according to Edwards, the aversion to risk and "hyper-professionalization of Computer Science" is part of a larger and worrisome trend throughout the whole field and all of western civilisation. Edwards' blog post argues that since 1996 "almost everything has been cleverly repackaging and re-engineering prior inventions. Or adding leaky layers to partially paper over problems below. Nothing is obsoleted, and the teetering stack grows ever higher..." "[M]aybe I'm imagining things. Maybe the reason progress stopped in 1996 is that we invented everything. Maybe there are no more radical breakthroughs possible, and all that's left is to tinker around the edges. This is as good as it gets: a 50 year old OS, 30 year old text editors, and 25 year old languages. "Bullshit. No technology has ever been permanent. We've just lost the will to improve."

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Since 1976 "Project Censored," a U.S.-based nonprofit media watchdog organization, has been identifying "the news that didn't make the news," the most significant stories it believes are being systematically overlooked. Slashdot ran stories about its annual list of the year's most censored news stories in 1999, 2003, 2004, and in 2007, when they'd presciently warned that the media was ignoring the issue of net neutrality. But their latest list of underreported stories includes this disturbing headline: "Antibiotic Abuse: Pharmaceutical Profiteering Accelerates Superbugs." Pharmaceutical giants Abbott and Sun Pharma are providing dangerous amounts of antibiotics to unlicensed doctors in India and incentivizing them to overprescribe. In August 2019 the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) reported that these unethical business practices are leading to a rise in superbugs, or bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotic treatment. Bacteria naturally evolve a resistance to antibiotics over time, but the widespread and inappropriate use of antibiotics accelerates this process. Superbugs are killing at least 58,000 babies each year and rendering a growing number of patients untreatable with all available drugs. India's unlicensed medical practitioners, known as "quack" doctors, are being courted by Abbott and Sun Pharma, billion-dollar companies that do business in more than one hundred countries, including the United States. The incentives these companies provide to quack doctors to sell antibiotics have included free medical equipment, gift cards, televisions, travel, and cash, earning some doctors nearly a quarter of their salary. "Sales representatives would also offer extra pills or money as an incentive to buy more antibiotics, encouraging potentially dangerous overprescription," a Sun Pharma sales representative revealed to an undercover BIJ reporter... [P]atients without access to better care often turn to quack doctors for treatment, and many are unaware that their local medical "professionals" have no formal training and are being bribed to sell unnecessary antibiotics. In September 2019, the BIJ reported on similar problems with broken healthcare systems, medical corruption, and dangerous superbugs in Cambodia. Their account describes how patients often request antibiotics for common colds, to pour onto wounds, and to feed to animals. Illegally practicing doctors and pharmacists in Cambodia admitted that they would often prescribe based on customer requests rather than appropriate medical guidelines. As the BIJ noted, "This kind of misuse speeds up the creation of drug resistant bacteria, or superbugs, which are predicted to kill 10 million people by 2050 if no action is taken...." Although superbugs have attracted some attention, their cause and importance remain poorly understood by the public. The Independent and BuzzFlash republished the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's report; otherwise, the role of pharmaceutical companies in the rise of dangerous superbugs has been drastically underreported. The site's list of the top 25 censored stories of 2019 - 2020 also includes: Growing interest in so-called "public" banks, "not legally obligated to maximize profits, as private banks are; instead, public banks are mandated to serve their communities." How rising sea levels and warmer waters will impact nuclear power plants, "posing increased risks of nuclear disasters." Proposals to revitalize journalism through public funding. How the U.S. military represents "a massive, hidden contributor to the climate crisis."

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Today a staff writer at Salon argues "The Mandalorian" has redeemed the Star Wars universe: The Disney+ series "The Mandalorian" has been both a critical triumph and commercial success. In my judgment, it's the most compelling live-action story in the "Star Wars" universe since 1983's "Return of The Jedi". To that end, the story in "The Mandalorian's" first two seasons about a mysterious bounty hunter and "the child" (who is actually more than 50 years old) he's entrusted with as they navigate their way through a dangerous world — rife with "scum and villainy," where the remnants of the evil Empire still terrorize the galaxy — has accomplished something difficult in science fiction and other genre entertainment. Longtime and serious "Star Wars" aficionados are enthusiastic about "The Mandalorian's" attention to detail and obvious love and respect for George Lucas's "Star Wars" universe. More casual "Star Wars" fans can enjoy the series for its story of family, friendship and adventure, and of course for "baby Yoda," aka Grogu, "the Child," a character described by legendary film director Werner Herzog as "heartbreakingly beautiful...." Where does "The Mandalorian" go next? Why is it such a compelling TV series and story? Is there such a thing as too much "fan service" in a genre film or TV series? Why has "The Mandalorian" been such a success, compared to the most recent "Star Wars" films? Disney and Lucasfilm have recently announced plans for 11 new TV series and at least three more feature films. At what point does "Star Wars" become overexposed and made into something common, a parody of itself? In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Bill Slavicsek, one of the writers and developers of the much-beloved "Star Wars" roleplaying game from West End Games. He is also the author of the "Star Wars Sourcebook," "A Guide to the Star Wars Universe," many guides to RPGs and, more recently, "Defining a Galaxy: 30 Years in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...." He was one of the main game designers for the Dungeons and Dragons RPGs and is currently the lead writer for the massively multi-player RPG Elder Scrolls Online. Fair warning: This conversation contains spoilers for Season Two of "The Mandalorian," which is now available on the Disney+ streaming service. Meanwhile CinemaBlend shares some commentary from another source, writing that "We need more Star Wars discourse like this." No arguing about bloodlines, or one director undoing the plotlines laid down by another. Just all of us, being amused by a cat who delightfully thinks that he or she can catch the lightsaber that a brooding Kylo Ren is tossing away during a pivotal moment in J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker... And it even has Mark Hamill's seal of approval... Kitty cats aside, it's a very good time to be a Star Wars fan. The Mandalorian just wrapped up an incredible season of television on Disney+ and Kathleen Kennedy recently ushered in a wave of new programming that will keep Star Wars on our radars for years to come.

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"A carefully designed four-day week could be introduced in the UK immediately and be affordable for most firms with more than 50 workers, a think tank has said," reports the Guardian, citing new research from a not-for-profit think tank: A report by Autonomy – which is campaigning for a shorter working week without loss of pay – said the majority of 50,000 firms studied would be able to cope with the change through higher productivity or by raising prices. The think tank said the government should investigate ways of rolling out a four-day week, starting with the public sector. Although many companies are struggling with the lingering impact of the UK's deepest slump in more than 300 years, Autonomy said that even under its "worst-case" scenario, a four-day week would be affordable for most firms once the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic had passed. It accepted, however, that some firms in sectors where labour costs were high and profit margins thin would experience cashflow problems if changes were implemented too quickly. Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy, said: "For the large majority of firms, reducing working hours is an entirely realistic goal for the near future. By providing a hypothetical 'stress test', we can dispel any myths about the affordability of a four-day working week.

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MojoKid summarizes an article from Hot Hardware: Boston Dynamics made news recently when 80% of the company was acquired by Hyundai. The company's family of robots is always impressive and now it appears they're having some fun to celebrate the close of 2020. Boston Dynamics' robot dog, Spot and its humanoid-like Atlas bot friend, were joined by their oddball sibling Handle to shake their booties on the dance floor to "Do You Love Me" by The Contours. The video starts off impressive enough with just a single Atlas showing its incredible dexterity while busting out some sweet moves that would leave even the late Patrick Swayze envious. However, as the routine progresses, the camera pulls back to show that another twin Atlas is dancing along with the first one as they show off their synchronized and fresh rug-cutting ways. As this robotic soul train continues to roll, Spot the dog saunters in to join in on the fun with the distinct flare that only rover can bring. The entire 3 minute clip is really a marvel to behold, and maybe even slightly unsettling for some that might not fully welcome our robot overlords.

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After Russia's massive breach of both government and private networks in the U.S., American intelligence officials "have expressed anger that Microsoft did not detect the attack earlier But new criticisms are also falling on SolarWinds: Some of the compromised SolarWinds software was engineered in Eastern Europe, and American investigators are now examining whether the incursion originated there, where Russian intelligence operatives are deeply rooted.... SolarWinds moved much of its engineering to satellite offices in the Czech Republic, Poland and Belarus, where engineers had broad access to the Orion network management software that Russia's agents compromised. The company has said only that the manipulation of its software was the work of human hackers rather than of a computer program. It has not publicly addressed the possibility of an insider being involved in the breach. None of the SolarWinds customers contacted by The New York Times in recent weeks were aware they were reliant on software that was maintained in Eastern Europe. Many said they did not even know they were using SolarWinds software until recently. Even with its software installed throughout federal networks, employees said SolarWinds tacked on security only in 2017, under threat of penalty from a new European privacy law. Only then, employees say, did SolarWinds hire its first chief information officer and install a vice president of "security architecture." Ian Thornton-Trump, a former cybersecurity adviser at SolarWinds, said he warned management that year that unless it took a more proactive approach to its internal security, a cybersecurity episode would be "catastrophic." After his basic recommendations were ignored, Mr. Thornton-Trump left the company. SolarWinds declined to address questions about the adequacy of its security. In a statement, it said it was a "victim of a highly-sophisticated, complex and targeted cyberattack" and was collaborating closely with law enforcement, intelligence agencies and security experts to investigate. But security experts note that it took days after the Russian attack was discovered before SolarWinds' websites stopped offering clients compromised code. And privately U.S. officials are now also considering the security of the U.S. power grid: Publicly, officials have said they do not believe the hackers from Russia's S.V.R. pierced classified systems containing sensitive communications and plans. But privately, officials say they still do not have a clear picture of what might have been stolen. They said they worried about delicate but unclassified data the hackers might have taken from victims like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, including Black Start, the detailed technical blueprints for how the United States plans to restore power in the event of a cataclysmic blackout. The plans would give Russia a hit list of systems to target to keep power from being restored in an attack like the one it pulled off in Ukraine in 2015, shutting off power for six hours in the dead of winter. Moscow long ago implanted malware in the American electric grid, and the United States has done the same to Russia as a deterrent....

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Slashdot reader Charlotte Web quotes SiliconValley.com: Bay Area ride-hailing giant Lyft is accused in a series of new lawsuits of failing to protect female passengers from rape by drivers. One plaintiff claims she was 15 when her driver raped her and then forced her to take an anti-pregnancy pill. The December legal actions are part of a "mass tort" lawsuit initiated in August 2019 by 20 women alleging sexual assault by Lyft drivers. Several dozen women joined the case soon after, and lawyers for the plaintiffs plan to add hundreds more alleged victims. A trial is scheduled for January 2022... The suits also allege that Lyft "does not cooperate with police when a driver commits an illegal sexual attack on its passengers," requiring that "extensive standards be met" before it will consider police requests for information, and only releasing information in response to a subpoena... Lyft could, the suits allege, ensure that video is taken and saved of all rides, and the firm could track drivers if they leave their cars for any reason other than to provide temporary help to a passenger, and it could set up a system in which passengers must confirm their intention to significantly change routes or destinations. Lyft said it has developed in-app features allowing riders to share their location with family and friends, and to quickly and easily obtain emergency help from a security firm that can alert police upon a passenger's request. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages, including punitive damages. The firm's rival, Uber, has also faced a torrent of allegations that it doesn't protect female passengers from sexual assault. After admitting last year that thousands of sexual assaults were reported during rides, Uber was fined $59 million this December for allegedly defying demands by California regulators for details about the reported attacks and its responses to them. Uber in response noted that its publicly issued safety report that acknowledged the sexual assaults was an industry first, and the San Francisco company described regulators' efforts to obtain details as a violation of victims' privacy.

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As part of its "Year in Review" series, the EFF shares their dramatic behind-the-scenes details about 2020's fight over the future of .org domains. It begins when the Internet Society (ISOC) announced plans to sell the Public Interest Registry — which manages the .org top-level domain (TLD) — to private equity firm Ethos Capital. "If you come at the nonprofit sector, you'd best not miss." EFF and other leaders in the NGO community sprung to action, writing a letter to ISOC urging it to stop the sale. What follows was possibly the most dramatic show of solidarity from the nonprofit sector of all time. And we won. Prior to the announcement, EFF had spent six months voicing our concerns to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) about the 2019 .ORG Registry Agreement, which gave the owner of .ORG new powers to censor nonprofits' websites (the agreement also lifted a longstanding price cap on .ORG registrations and renewals)... Throughout that six-month process of navigating ICANN's labyrinthine decision-making structure, none of us knew that ISOC would soon be selling PIR. With .ORG in the hands of a private equity firm, those fears of censorship and price gouging became a lot more tangible for nonprofits and NGOs. The power to take advantage of .ORG users was being handed to a for-profit company whose primary obligation was to make money for its investors.... More NGOs began to take notice of the .ORG sale and the danger it posed to nonprofits' freedom of expression online. Over 500 organizations and 18,000 individuals had signed our letter by the end of 2019, including big-name organizations like Greenpeace, Consumer Reports, Oxfam, and the YMCA of the USA. At the same time, questions began to emerge (PDF) about whether Ethos Capital could possibly make a profit without some drastic changes in policy for .ORG. By the beginning of 2020, the financial picture had become a lot clearer: Ethos Capital was paying $1.135 billion for .ORG, nearly a third of which was financed by a loan. No matter how well-meaning Ethos was, the pressure to sell "censorship as a service" would align with Ethos' obligation to produce returns for its investors... Six members of Congress wrote a letter to ICANN in January urging it to scrutinize the sale more carefully. A few days later, EFF, nonprofit advocacy group NTEN, and digital rights groups Fight for the Future and Demand Progress participated in a rally outside of the ICANN headquarters in Los Angeles. Our message was simple: stop the sale and create protections for nonprofits. Before the protest, ICANN staff reached out to the organizers offering to meet with us in person, but on the day of the protest, ICANN canceled on us. That same week, Amnesty International, Access Now, the Sierra Club, and other global NGOs held a press conference at the World Economic Forum to tell world leaders that selling .ORG threatens civil society. All of the noise caught the attention of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who wrote to ICANN (PDF) asking it for key information about its review of the sale... Click through to read the conclusion...

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Farming equipment like combine harvesters "beam back reams of data to its manufacturer," reports Forbes: GPS records the combine's precise path through the field as it moves. Sensors tally the number of crops gathered per acre and the spacing between them. On a sister machine called a planter, algorithms adjust the distribution of seeds based on which parts of the soil have in past years performed best. Another machine, a sprayer, uses algorithms to scan for weeds and zap them with pesticides. Meanwhile sensors record the wear and tear on the machines, so that when the farmer who operates them heads to the local distributor to look for a replacement part, it has already been ordered and is waiting for them. Farming may be an earthy industry, but much of it now takes place in the cloud. Leading farm machine makers like Chicago-based John Deere or Georgia's AGCO collect data from all around the world thanks to the ability of their bulky machines to extract a huge variety of metrics from farmers' fields and store it online... The amassing of all that data in the hands of the few major companies that sell farm equipment across the country or worldwide has opened up big opportunities for the "smart farming" industry, even as many in the farming community are reluctant to part with information about the fields they plow.... Equipment makers with sufficient sales of machines around the country may in theory actually be able to predict, at least to some small but meaningful extent, the prices of various crops by analyzing the data its machines are sending in — such as "yields" of crops per acre, the amount of fertilizer used, or the average number of seeds of a given crop planted in various regions. Were the company then to sell that data to a commodities trader, say, it could likely reap a windfall: normally, the markets must wait for highly-anticipated government surveys to run their course.

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Writing in Time magazine, two neuroscientists share a surprising new theory on exactly how dreaming protects our brains: Neuroscience used to think that different parts of the brain were predetermined to perform specific functions. But more recent discoveries have upended the old paradigm. One part of the brain may initially be assigned a specific task; for instance, the back of our brain is called the "visual cortex" because it usually handles sight. But that territory can be reassigned to a different task... Recent decades have yielded several revelations about livewiring, but perhaps the biggest surprise is its rapidity... In the ceaseless competition for brain territory, the visual system has a unique problem: due to the planet's rotation, all animals are cast into darkness for an average of 12 out of every 24 hours... So how did the visual cortex of our ancestors' brains defend its territory, in the absence of input from the eyes? We suggest that the brain preserves the territory of the visual cortex by keeping it active at night. In our "defensive activation theory," dream sleep exists to keep neurons in the visual cortex active, thereby combating a takeover by the neighboring senses. In this view, dreams are primarily visual precisely because this is the only sense that is disadvantaged by darkness. Thus, only the visual cortex is vulnerable in a way that warrants internally-generated activity to preserve its territory... REM sleep is triggered by a specialized set of neurons that pump activity straight into the brain's visual cortex, causing us to experience vision even though our eyes are closed... The anatomical precision of these circuits suggests that dream sleep is biologically important — such precise and universal circuitry rarely evolves without an important function behind it... We suggest that dream sleep exists, at least in part, to prevent the other senses from taking over the brain's visual cortex when it goes unused. Dreams are the counterbalance against too much flexibility. Thus, although dreams have long been the subject of song and story, they may be better understood as the strange lovechild of brain plasticity and the rotation of the planet.

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An anonymous reader writes: So on New Year's Eve, the "jam" rock band Phish re-broadcast their legendary 1995 performance on New Year's Eve -- while playing a game of chess against the audience. (Just as they'd done in 1995 -- although during that tour they'd made two just moves during each show.) In a video promoting this year's event, a chess "historian" remembers "No single band in the '90s was playing better chess against their audience" and shares an alleged conspiracy theory that they were being coached by Garry Kasparov. And yet, "Midway through the second of two nights at Madison Square Garden, the audience takes Phish's queen" -- and the band resigned. This had left their ongoing audience-versus-band match with a score (one game apiece). So 25 years later, for New Year's Eve, Phish finally staged the great re-match. "However, just as it was time to begin the game (and as the show kicked off with opener "Punch You In The Eye"), Chess.com, the popular chess site hosting the online game, crashed," reports JamBands.com. Thinking quickly, the band announced on Twitter that "We're making a quick pivot, 2020 style, to live chess mode. We will be using a moderator from Chess.com who will take feedback on the move within the chat and then complete the audience move." JamBands.com explains how the long-awaited match finally culminated: In between sets, the broadcast cut to a live zoom call between all four band members, during which they discussed their next moves in the game and chatted. At various points, Gordon and Anastasio picked up guitars, and Gordon had a surreal projection of a chess board floating behind him at times. During the first break, McConnell referenced the technical difficulties. "I'm sorry this didn't work out to plan, but nothing this year did," he said with a laugh. During the break between the second and third sets, the shenanigans increased, with drummer Jon Fishman following through on an off-hand promise to shave his head. (At first, the other three band members didn't even notice.) Ultimately, the band defeated the audience... Down to just their king, queen and a few pawns, the audience resigned as the band was up a pawn and still had a rook and queen on the board... Phish raised funds for a charity during the broadcast. "For this final webcast of the year, our beneficiary will be none other than The WaterWheel Foundation itself," the band wrote prior to the stream. "Since 1997, the band and their fans have collaborated on a nationwide charitable endeavor by raising funds and donating the proceeds across the country. This year alone, collectively we have raised and donated nearly $750,000 to 27 different nonprofits during the Dinner And A Movie series. Join us in continuing to support those in need...." You can watch the entire four-and-a-half-hour webcast on YouTube.

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While EVs are still in the single-digit area of overall vehicle sales, they continue to climb and have already surpassed the sales of vehicles with manual transmissions. Now it seems that the electrification investments made by automakers are getting a boost from another part of the country. From a report: Massachusetts is joining California with a plan to ban the sale of new gasolined-powered cars by 2035. Governor Charlie Baker released a 2050 decarbonization road map that includes the reduction of emissions from passenger cars. Massachusetts states that 27 percent of statewide emissions come from light-duty vehicles (passenger vehicles). The goal is for the state to reach net-zero fossil-fuel emissions by 2050. In order to make sure those EVs are actually usable, the state plans to expand the public charging infrastructure to take into account that many people don't have a garage in which to charge an electric vehicle. The initiatives by California and now Massachusetts could be the beginning of a trend by states to slowly ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles. Several European countries have the same types of measures in order to battle climate change. Meanwhile, President-Elect Joe Biden has a plan to speed up the electrification of vehicles in the United States that includes replacing the country's fleets with EVs.

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More than 100,000 Zyxel firewalls, VPN gateways, and access point controllers contain a hardcoded admin-level backdoor account that can grant attackers root access to devices via either the SSH interface or the web administration panel. From a report: The backdoor account, discovered by a team of Dutch security researchers from Eye Control, is considered as bad as it gets in terms of vulnerabilities. Device owners are advised to update systems as soon as time permits. Security experts warn that anyone ranging from DDoS botnet operators to state-sponsored hacking groups and ransomware gangs could abuse this backdoor account to access vulnerable devices and pivot to internal networks for additional attacks.

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While publishers and stores feared COVID-19 would be an extinction-level threat, the industry has proved more resilient than thought. From a report: In March, when COVID-19 hit the comic industry in earnest, many retailers and publishers feared it would be an apocalyptic event for the business. Stay-at-home orders shuttered stores, and shipments of new product ceased for several months when Diamond Comics Distributors hit pause. Stores have struggled to survive, and some have shuttered permanently. However, months after the comic book industry restarted -- accompanied by a publicity campaign proclaiming that the industry's "comeback will be bigger than [the] setback" -- there are multiple signs that comics has proven to be far stronger than anyone, including those inside the industry, expected in the face of an uncertain year. "The biggest surprise started during May and June, as we were allowed to reopen, comics started shipping again, and customers were slowly starting to come back to the shop. Customers were buying comics. A lot of comics," California retailer Ryan Higgins tells THR. With comic conventions canceled and people not taking vacations, many fans concentrated on making their collections more complete. "Comic supplies sales skyrocketed right away as people took this time to clean up their collection," says Higgins. "New titles were selling better than we ever expected, graphic novel sales spiked, and back issues jumped dramatically in price and flew out the door just as fast. Sales during the summer and early fall months were just unbelievable." [...] A key metric for the health of the industry is how many comics stores are ordering. Those numbers are moving in the right direction. "March 2020 saw Diamond ship 5.9 million comics; September and October were both over 7 million copies each," writes analyst John Jackson Miller in an email to THR. "Those are both behind the equivalent months in 2019; October 2019, with the X-Men relaunch, was the fourth best month of the decade of the 2010s. But per release, the sales levels are improved, and as the number of releases continues to build back, you can see it fully catching up." As Higgins suggests, it's not just new titles that are seeing a bump; multiple publishers told THR that back orders for already released material still available directly from the publisher scaled up in the latter half of the year, as well.

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One of the biggest disappointments from CES 2021 going virtual will be the lack of a splashy booth by Google. Whether you cared about the company's bevy of Google Assistant-related announcements, it was hard to deny the stagecraft employed by the tech giant. From a report: For the last few years, Google boasted some of the most eye-catching CES booths, from a theme park ride in 2019 to an escape room back in January's show. Unlike other CES heavy hitters, like Samsung or LG, Google opted to place its typically massive "activations" in the parking lot in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center, suddenly making that a trendy spot to place a booth. Google's booths largely pushed the benefits of Google Assistant, underscoring the importance of the digital assistant as it scrambled to claw back market share from Amazon's Alexa, which had a head start in the area thanks to Amazon's array of Echo speakers. Indeed, Google and its Assistant were part of a battle waged over digital assistants at past CES shows, with extravagant booths and with partners announcing that their respective assistants would come embedded in a new television, car or some other gadget. But with CES going virtual, a move dictated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many of the show's biggest names are opting to skip the show. Google will hold partner meetings, but it won't have a large presence at the show, according to a spokesman. It's not alone -- the Consumer Technology Association said it expects about 1,000 exhibitors at the virtual show, less than a quarter of the total from the January confab.

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Samsung seems to be close to launching a new Tile-like device for tracking lost items. The tracker, likely called the Galaxy SmartTag, has been leaking out over the past month, and there's some speculation it could be announced alongside the Galaxy S21 later in January. From a report: The Galaxy SmartTag would use Bluetooth to connect with nearby devices and broadcast its location, so owners could find it later if they misplace whatever it's attached to. It'll be powered by a replaceable button cell battery, according to a regulatory filing spotted by GSMArena, so you won't have to throw it out and buy a new one when the battery dies. Samsung's tracker sounds a lot like a Tile, and it'll apparently look a lot like one, too.

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A new era has begun for the United Kingdom after it completed its formal separation from the European Union. From a report: The UK stopped following EU rules at 23:00 GMT, as replacement arrangements for travel, trade, immigration and security co-operation came into force. Boris Johnson said the UK had "freedom in our hands" and the ability to do things "differently and better" now the long Brexit process was over. But opponents of leaving the EU maintain the country will be worse off. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, whose ambition it is to take an independent Scotland back into the EU, tweeted: "Scotland will be back soon, Europe. Keep the light on." BBC Europe editor Katya Adler said there was a sense of relief in Brussels that the Brexit process was over, "but there is regret still at Brexit itself". The first lorries arriving at the borders entered the UK and EU without delay. On Friday evening, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted that border traffic had been "low due to [the] bank holiday" but there had been no disruption in Kent as "hundreds" of lorries crossed the Channel with a "small" number turned back.

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LG's got a transparent OLED display, and if you're wondering how such a device could be useful, the company has a few ideas to share. From a report: Ahead of the upcoming CES 2021 show, LG shared a few ideas on how its transparent OLED products could fit into real-world situations. One idea is having a transparent OLED at a restaurant, where the display would pop up from the bar, between the customer and the waiter, allowing the customer to see the menu and order while still being able to see the waiter. LG also designed a Smart Bed with a frame from which a transparent OLED TV can rise up, and retract to when not needed. The frame, which also features a set of speakers, can freely be moved around the house. Another example is having a 55-inch transparent OLED display at a subway train, where it replaces a traditional window. The customers could enjoy the scenery while viewing the weather forecast, the news, and information on subway lines.

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