5G has started a new wireless war.

For the wireless industry, 2020 was notable not just because of the coronavirus pandemic, but because it marked the true beginning of the 5G era. While the actual networks still have a long way to go to fully live up to the hype, they did usher in at least one welcome change: a renewed competition between wireless carriers.

At the beginning of the year, Verizon was well established as the largest carrier in America, AT&T was in second place and T-Mobile was pushing hard to get its merger with Sprint approved. On the network front, T-Mobile was leading with a nationwide low-band 5G network that didn't offer much compared to 4G LTE, Verizon was focused on a millimeter-wave rollout that offered much faster speeds but only worked on certain city blocks, and AT&T was dabbling with both.

As we march to the end of the year, the industry has flipped. Verizon is still the biggest carrier, but its nationwide 5G network is still smaller than T-Mobile's, which has taken the pole position in the US 5G race. Thanks to the approval of its Sprint merger in April, T-Mobile not only surpassed AT&T as the second-largest carrier, but it is also well underway with the rollout of a faster midband 5G network which offers significantly faster speeds than low-band 5G with much better coverage than the higher-frequency millimeter wave. AT&T, meanwhile, has fallen to third and has become one of the most aggressive carriers when it comes to promotions, particularly with iPhone 12 deals that offer heavy discounts to both new and existing customers.

The radical shift underscores the topsy-turvy nature of the wireless world, which also had to deal with another curveball from the coronavirus and a global pandemic that kept people from being on the go and actually using those upgraded networks. That competitive nature should continue on to 2021, when the battle over dominance in 5G and consumers is expected to intensify.

Read more: 5G will start to live up to its hype in 2021 -- for real this time

Over the last decade, Verizon dominated 4G LTE from the get-go, when it was the first major carrier to roll out the network technology. But the rise of 5G has Big Red trailing T-Mobile.

Thanks to its Sprint merger, T-Mobile has opened a wide lead. It has the largest low-band 5G network, covering 270 million people today, and its faster midband network -- something that Verizon can't catch up to right away -- is expected to reach 100 million people by the end of this year.

T-Mobile's president of technology, Neville Ray, said he is targeting a nationwide midband network covering 200 million people by the end of 2021, offering much higher speeds compared to the low-band 5G now used for nationwide coverage. Ray expects average speeds over the midband network to be between 300 to 400Mbps, with peak speeds "north of 1Gbps."

T-Mobile will continue to expand its low-band and midband network coverage as well as its millimeter-wave offering, though the latter may not arrive in a real way until the second half of next year. T-Mobile currently has millimeter-wave 5G in parts of just seven cities.

"For us, it's all about delivering the best 5G mobility experience that anybody's going to see, you know, in 2021 and beyond," Ray says. "We've made a tremendous start on that in 2020."

Discover the latest news and best reviews in smartphones and carriers from CNET's mobile experts.

T-Mobile also was the first of the major US carriers to launch a standalone 5G network that isn't tied to any existing 4G LTE technology. These networks offer better coverage and lower latency. AT&T is starting its deployment this year, and Verizon expects to launch its own standalone 5G network in 2021.

The lower latency should allow for improvements in applications such as augmented reality and gaming, Frank Boulben, Verizon's senior vice president of marketing and products, tells CNET. "Those are the types of applications that will be largely improved with a standalone 5G core versus a 4G core."

In the interim, Verizon announced on Thursday that it had exceeded its goal of 60 millimeter-wave cities in 2020 (officially hitting 61) and has expanded its low-band 5G network to cover 230 million people.

It plans to continue to expand both its low-band footprint and its millimeter-wave offering next year, though Kyle Malady, Verizon's chief technology officer, says not to expect another wave of 60 new millimeter-wave cities in 2021. "You won't see 60," he says, "but you'll see just growth in the cities that we've already deployed."

Millimeter-wave has been Verizon's 5G focus, and the company is keenly aware of its limitations -- particularly when it comes to working indoors. Malady says that the company is working with a variety of partners to help bring the signal indoors and has been working with retailers, including Apple Stores, and factories to test how the technology performs inside.

Improvements are also coming for its low-band performance, with Malady already planning some "optimizations" in the first quarter of 2021.

For AT&T, the focus for 2021 will not be on speed but on improving its latency, or the responsiveness of its network, including scaling out the standalone 5G network offering.

"If I look at our typical speed across the network, we're actually pretty pleased," Gordon Mansfield, AT&T vice president for converged access & device technology, tells CNET. "The next thing is starting to improve that latency for that immersive experience."

The company is targeting a latency of under 20 milliseconds for "the majority of the population" and then continuing to "further improve it." It offers a low-band 5G network that covers 225 million people and has a millimeter-wave offering (what it calls 5G Plus) available in parts of 36 cities.

2020 started with four major carriers, but Sprint is now a part of T-Mobile.

Given the existing state of 5G, the improvements can't come soon enough.

When asked to ascribe letter grades to the carriers for the 2020 performances, Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart says they are "all over the place."

"In terms of marketing, Verizon gets an A," he says. "They've convinced people they have something that they don't, which is a great 5G network in places where it's usable."

Like rival low-band networks from T-Mobile and AT&T, Verizon's nationwide low-band 5G network isn't radically different from 4G LTE connections, something CNET tested in the New York area this past month. "Even though, in some cases, AT&T and Verizon have very fast 4G networks, you're not going to see an improvement on that with 5G," says Greengart, until both carriers get more wireless airwaves known as spectrum.

A Federal Communications Commission auction for more midband spectrum, known as the C-Band, is now underway, and Verizon and AT&T are both expected to be active bidders. Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, wrote in a Dec. 8 research note that Verizon is "widely expected to be the most aggressive player," adding that his firm expects the telecom giant to spend "$16.25 billion on C-Band in 2021."

But getting that spectrum and putting it to use will take time. "Given the expected auction timeline and spectrum clearing deadlines," Moffett writes, "Verizon and other buyers will not be able to access even the first tranche of C-Band spectrum for 12-18 months after the auction is completed."

Good coverage from this spectrum is "two or three years out," Greengart says.

Verizon's updated 5G Home router and receiver.

The expansion of 5G should also open up a new front in the wireless carrier battles: home broadband. T-Mobile and Verizon have been very open about plans to expand into home internet service, and each has already begun dabbling in the space.

T-Mobile offers a 4G LTE-based home internet product, while Verizon offers both a 4G LTE based product and, in 12 cities where it already has millimeter-wave 5G, a 5G Home service that connects to that faster network.

Verizon's 5G Home service offers average download speeds of 300 Mbps for either $50 or $70 per month (depending on if you have the right Verizon wireless plan), and Malady says to expect Verizon to continue to expand where it offers 5G Home to more cities in 2021. He adds that it is possible the 4G LTE home broadband will expand next year as it continues to add more capacity to its network. In addition to the C-Band auction, Verizon spent $1.9 billion acquiring some additional midband spectrum this summer, which it has already begun putting to use.

T-Mobile will have a 5G home broadband device that Ray says will be "plug and play" and arrive in the first quarter of 2021. The carrier charges $50 for its existing 4G LTE product, though Ray would not disclose how much the 5G offering would cost. The launch of the 5G home internet product will also not be nationwide, instead, T-Mobile will be focusing on areas that don't have strong home internet options.

"There's a lot of places where people's access to broadband is pretty, pretty goddamn awful today," Ray says. "And I wish we could fix all of that overnight but we will make a start on that as a company, you know, in 2021, and that's the benefit that's coming with 5G and the capacity that we can build and we deliver out in the marketplace."

Although AT&T has largely stayed away from offering a home internet service over its cellular network, preferring to instead focus on its wired internet.

"We actually have very good fiber penetration and if fiber to the home is available, it is a superior performance advantage than anything we can do wirelessly," Mansfield says. The company plans more fiber buildouts in 2021.

In a home internet market that for many has long struggled to offer competition, 2021 should be a doozy. In addition to the wireless carriers, new entrants include SpaceX, Elon Musk's space company, which has been launching low-Earth orbit satellites into space throughout 2020 with the goal of eventually providing home internet access.

The company reportedly plans to expand its "Better than Nothing" beta service, which offers broadband internet for $99 per month (plus a $499 upfront cost for a terminal), to more people in 2021. Other companies are looking at LEOs for providing home internet, including Amazon with its Project Kuiper program.

Boost Mobile is Dish's current wireless offering.

Lurking in the background of all of this is Dish. The satellite TV provider has spent years, and billions of dollars, accumulating valuable wireless spectrum with the promise that it would eventually turn on a mobile network.

As part of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger, Dish acquired Sprint's prepaid wireless brand, Boost Mobile, and gained the ability to use T-Mobile's network for seven years while it built out its own network. While the company has made announcements about vendors and the progress it is making developing the pieces needed for a 5G network, it has yet to turn on the service.

In court last year as part of the hearings to get the T-Mobile-Sprint merger approved, Dish co-founder Charlie Ergen talked about how his company's pricing would be lower than where the market was and said his company would have a 5G network operational in one city by the end of 2020. While Boost Mobile has experimented with cheaper rate plans, a publicly accessible Dish 5G city has yet to happen.

Dish is testing a 5G network in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that is taking advantage of a new technology known as O-RAN, which will make up the core of its future wireless network, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking. The person added that the radios it needs should arrive in the second half of 2021 which is when the company will go live with its first 5G cities. It is unclear where these cities are located or how many Dish will launch in 2021.

When asked in court if the company can be trusted to build out a 5G network, Ergen cited potential fines and lost spectrum, saying that "it'd be financial suicide" if the company failed to meet the guidelines and that Dish is "not suicidal."

Yet industry watchers remain skeptical of Dish's motives.

"I believe they are going to start building something in a few in a handful of locations so that they can say that they're doing something," said Greengart. But, he cautions, "they are using brand new technology which introduces its own delays and they don't necessarily have the capital to do a full rollout."

"I am not expecting any meaningful coverage for a 5G Dish network in 2021," he continues. "Maybe they'll build it in one city. Maybe."

Originally posted here:
The carrier battle over 5G will only escalate in 2021 - CNET

From an office in Singapore, Lim Kim Hai has waited out the COVID-19 pandemic orchestrating the biggest shake-up of Australias aviation industry in at least two decades.

Country airline Regional Express (Rex) launching flights between capital cities may spell an end to the Qantas-Virgin duopoly, but it seemed impossible to Lim as recently as February this year.

That was when Virgin again cut the size of its budget arm Tigerair, prompting a boardroom discussion at Rex about whether that opened a gap in the market it could fill.

We looked at it very quickly and said no, explains Lim, who is Rexs executive chairman and its largest shareholder. Even if Tiger goes away, theres not enough room. You may take the small space that Tigers occupying but then theres no more space to grow.

Lim Kim Hais audacious plan to take on Qantas and Virgin was hatched from an office in Singapore.

But like many things, COVID-19 has changed everything. This week the Civil Aviation Safety Authority approved Rex to start flying Boeing 737 jets around Australia. Tickets are on sale for its first passenger service between Sydney and Melbourne on March 1 next year.

Peter Harbison, from the aviation consultancy CAPA Centre for Aviation, says Rexs move is likely to be one of the most significant shake-ups to the domestic airline market since Qantas launched 100 years ago.

People will say, oh theres only room for two airlines in Australia and look at what happened to the other ones that tried to start up, he says. But this is different. In terms of likely lasting significance ... this is the biggest change to the market, ever.

Already there are signs of a fierce battle brewing. Virgins boss Jayne Hrdlicka has predicted it will never have been cheaper to travel in Australia as her airline (now owned by US private equity giant Bain Capital after COVID-19 pushed it into bankruptcy in April) and Qantas fight to maintain their market share against the new challenger.

And the stakes are high for Rex, which currently flies a fleet of 60 Saab 340 turboprop aircraft to 59 regional and remote destinations.

Its a very bold move and Im actually, personally, quite scared because everything that [weve] built up over the past 18 years could be brought down, he says in a rare interview from his office in Singapore, where he is based.

In an airline anything is possible: we have all the know-how and efficiency but there are things we cannot control.

While many people have learnt how to work remotely during COVID-19, the 63-year-old Lim has overseen Rex from his base in Singapore for the past 17 years, normally visiting here four times a year.

The pandemic has meant he has not been in Australia since March, and the entire launch of jet services has been coordinated via countless emails and video conferences with his executives.

Rex itself was born out the collapse of Ansett in 2001, when a group of investors salvaged and merged two of its regional subsidiaries, Hazelton and Kendell Airlines.

Lim was one of the major backers but the former defence engineer and underwater warfare specialist, had no airline experience. Despite that he ended up in charge of the now ASX-listed group after it ran into financial strife months after its 2002 launch.

A mock up of a Boeing 737 in Rex livery.

The next chapter in Rexs history was sparked by another airline collapse when the long-struggling Virgin went into voluntary administration in April after the pandemic forced it and other airlines around the world to ground their fleets.

The pandemic threatened Rex too, but it was propped up by government subsidies intended to keep vital air links to rural and regional destinations open. (That Rex faired so well through the pandemic and is now muscling onto their own turf has infuriated Qantas and Virgin).

You can see theres a three-player market for two years, three years, five years. But what weve seen in the past is the first time another crisis comes along... they end up reverting back to a duopoly.

Very soon after [Virgins collapse] we started thinking of the space that opened up, Lim says.

That is when we said if we can find a backer we think this will work. Especially since everyone else is suffering, we think this can work.

Launching what is essentially a new airline at the peak of a pandemic and industry crisis might sound foolish, but it is the pandemic that gave Lim the confidence to attempt what he previously thought impossible.

Before COVID, Australia was facing a pilot shortage. Now, Qantas and Virgin have laid off hundreds whom Rex is employing on lower wages. There were no peak-hour landing slots at Australias major airports; now theyre sitting empty. And there is a glut of jets that aircraft leasing companies are desperate to get off the tarmac. Lim says Rex has rented Boeing 737s that Virgin used to fly, but hes paying half the price.

Theres never been a better time to start an airline than today, he says.

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Rex will launch in March with three Boeing 737s flying nine return Sydney-Melbourne services daily, which will give it about a 10 per cent market share on that route based on pre-COVID traffic.

Two more jets will enter service by Easter, opening flights to Brisbane by mid-year. Rex plans to have up to 10 aircraft and flights to other capital cities by the end of 2021.

Lim says that if everything goes well, he thinks Rex can add a new plane to its fleet every six weeks over the next three or four weeks, ending up with about 40 jets flying on the countrys 10 busiest routes. If Rex fills all those seats, it will have around 30 per cent of the national aviation market - which is what Virgin had before COVID-19.

Rexs pitch to win customers is Qantas service for Jetstar prices - something Lim says it can do because of its lower cost-base courtesy of those cheap aircraft, lower wages and the fact launching jet services adds relatively little to its existing operational overheads. Rex estimates its cost base will be about 35 per cent lower than Virgin before its collapse and 20 per cent lower than Jetstars.

That sets up two possible outcomes, he says: either Rex will win customers and market share with its superior value product, or Qantas and Virgin will try to crush Rex with cheap airfares and capacity.

If they behave in a rational, commercial manner, then we think that within a year we will be profitable, he says. Of course they may choose not to do so.

However Lim says Qantas has been weakened by COVID and needs to repair its balance sheet while Virgins new owner Bain will want a quick return on its investment in the now trimmed-down airline, meaning they will be reluctant to revisit the 2012-2014 capacity and airfare war that devastated both their finances.

Secondly, Lim believes he will be protected by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The federal government ordered it in June to closely monitor airlines for anti-competitive behaviour and ensure Qantas did not squash a relaunched Virgin or any airline that tried to replace it.

With a market value of just $224 million, Rex is a minnow compared to the $9 billion Qantas and Virgin, now backed by the $US105 billion Bain Capital.

Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of Virgin Australia, is predicting ultra-cheap airfares next year.Credit:Attila Csaszar

But it now has the backing of another private equity giant, the $US40 billion PAG Asia Capital. Its issued Rex with up to $150 million of convertible notes to fund its launch plans. Based on Rexs current equity that can be swapped for up to a 47 per cent stake in the company.

Existing investors appear to be on board, with Rexs shares trading almost 80 per cent higher today than they were a year ago. (Lim himself owns 17 per cent of the company. Altogether, 33 per cent is held by Lim, his business partner and Rex director Lee Thian Soo and their wives).

CAPAs Harbison says the availability of slots at Sydney Airport due to the pandemic is crucial for Rex. Thats always been the thing that has killed startups in Australia, he says. Tigerair suffered that fate after its launch in 2007 (Virgin took it over five years later), while Virgin itself only survived because Ansett collapsed.

Harbison cautions though that things will get tougher for Rex as it grows larger and the aviation market recovers from COVID-19. Unless you really do some serious damage to Virgin, hed be wiser not to get too ambitious, he says, noting that if Rex were to gain a 30 per cent market share as Lim suggests then it would be bye-bye Virgin.

Credit Suisse aviation analyst Paul Butler says that if Rexs cost base really is as low as it says, then it has a reasonable chance of being successful. That will end the calm Qantas and Virgin have enjoyed since their airfare truce in 2015 and could lead to a showdown with Virgin.

Theres some big investments on the table from Bain - theyve put a significant amount of capital into Virgin. Rex is potentially at a much better cost position than Virgin and theres got to be some question marks about whether a three-player market is sustainable, Butler says.

You can see theres a three-player market for two years, three years, five years. But what weve seen in the past is the first time another crisis comes along... they end up reverting back to a duopoly.

Things appear to be heating up already. Along with Virgins Hrdlicka predicting ultra-cheap fares next year, Qantas budget arm Jetstar says it will have more planes flying around Australia in March than it did pre-COVID as its international destinations remain shut off.

And Rex this week accused Qantas of anti-competitive and unconscionable behaviour by flooding the regional airline market with flights after the larger carrier said it would launch services on seven new regional routes.

There have been bumps for Rex too. This week the Australian Securities and Investments Commission banned it from using exemptions for reduced disclosure in fundraising documents for one year as punishment for a continuous disclosure breach. That came after Rexs deputy chairman, the ex-Nationals MP John Sharp, told a journalist about its capital city launch plans - and the $200 million in new equity needed to fund it - before Rex told the market.

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Business reporter at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Originally posted here:
From turboprops to third force: Rexs bold move to shake up Australian aviation - Sydney Morning Herald

MSI is very well-known for their gaming products for the PC market, from motherboards, accessories, and right up to gaming laptops and desktops. The company was one of the first to focus almost exclusively on their gaming lineup, and that focus has made them very successful in that market. In the laptop space, MSIs gaming lineup are some of the best systems around, even if they do often come with a price premium. But, while the gaming market has been strong even throughout some PC sales slowdowns, MSI is again dipping their toes in a wider market. The MSI Prestige series of laptops abstain from the gaming nomenclature, design, and marketing. The Prestige series targets a much more traditional Ultrabook buyer, with a thin, light design, quality materials, and less RGB.

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo, as the name suggests, is a 14-inch laptop which offers the modern design touches of an aluminum chassis, with thin display bezels, packing plenty of notebook into a smaller footprint. The 16 mm thick design weighs in at just 1.29 Kg, or 2.84 lbs, making it very portable for a 14-inch device.

Powering the MSI Prestige 14 Evo is Intels latest Tiger Lake platform, and specifically, the Core i7-1185G7. The new 11th generation Core platform is Intels second gen built on the 10 nm process dubbed Superfin, and brings not only an updated CPU microarchitecture, but also is the first shipping SoC to feature Intels latest Xe graphics platform. The new Willow Cove microarchitecture brings some IPC improvements over Sunny Cove found in the 10th gen Ice Lake SoC, but being based on an updated 10 nm process also allows for much higher CPU frequencies, which now scale to 4.8 GHz peak, compared to just 3.9 GHz peak a year ago. Ian did a deep dive on the new Tiger Lake platform based on an Intel reference design laptop, so be sure to check into that for a more comprehensive review on the SoC itself.

Intels Evo platform is a proper branding of what was formerly known as Project Athena, and MSI has worked with Intel to properly implement the Evo requirements on the Prestige 14. The Evo platform requires certain responsiveness levels, instant wake support, fast charging of at least four hours from 30 minutes of charging, Intels Wi-Fi 6 network adapter, Thunderbolt 4, and at least nine hours of battery life. The reasoning for Evo is that customers who purchase Evo branded laptops will get a minimum experience level, which is always a good goal.

MSI has come through on all of the Evo requirements, with not only the latest gen Core i7, but multiple Thunderbolt 4 ports, instant wake, and of course the Intel Wi-Fi 6 adapter which has been easily the best wireless NIC on the PC since it was launched. MSI has also included PCIe 4 storage, thanks to the Phison PS5016-E16 based SSD, with MSI offering 512 GB and 1 TB choices. MSI will also be offering a model with an NVIDIA GTX 1650 Max-Q dGPU if you need more GPU grunt.

MSI has been one of the strongest players in the gaming laptop market for some time, but with the Prestige series, they are up against some stiff competition in the Ultrabook market. To succeed, MSI will need to combine style and performance. It is a target they have often achieved with their gaming lineup, so lets dig in and see how the MSI Prestige 14 Evo can handle itself in a very crowded market.

MSIs Prestige 14 Evo eschews the gaming styling of most of the MSI laptop brand, and to that effect, MSI has replaced their well-known dragon logo with a stylized version of MSI. The result is an edgy look to the logo, but thanks to the subtle coloring, it does well to blend in on first glance. MSI is offering the Prestige 14 Evo in both a Pure White and Carbon Gray color scheme, with the review unit being the latter. The Pure White does look great in images, although the white display bezels do somewhat amplify their presence. In a likely purposeful attempt, the Carbon Gray looks pretty similar to most other Ultrabooks on the market. Subtlety is clearly one of the design cues.

Opening the laptop up brings about one of the most obvious design elements. MSI has chosen to implement a display hinge which lifts the rear of the laptop up 5 maximum. They ostensibly suggest this is for an improved typing experience, but as with other laptops that do this, the ergonomics of a forward tilted keyboard are not great. Some people may prefer a better view of the keyboard, but for your wrists, this isnt the best design. What it does likely help is cooling though, as it would ensure the bottom of the laptop isnt hard-pressed into anything to block airflow. And, MSI has done a good job on stability when open, unlike some other laptops that also use a tilt-hinge. The rubber feet on the display do a nice job holding the laptop in place.

MSI advertises the Prestige 14 as having Ultra-thin bezels which is pretty much expected on a new laptop design. However, the bezels are nowhere near as thin as some of the competition, especially on the top and bottom. The top bezel is large enough to house both a normal webcam as well as IR for Windows Hello login, but the webcam is unfortunately only 720p despite the fairly large top bezel providing plenty of room. The bottom bezel is quite large, and there is a lot of wasted space that could have been used to provide a taller display as is also popping up in some of the competition. The 16:9 aspect ratio of the display, while still the industry standard, is not the only game in town anymore with several competing designs offering 16:10 or 3:2 aspect ratios.

Moving on to the keyboard, MSIs gaming lineup generally offers some of the best keyboards in the business, with MSI usually tapping SteelSeries to provide the keyboards on their gaming lineup, but that is not the case here. The Prestige sticks with a white backlit keyboard, offering three levels of brightness, and the keys offer 1.5 mm of travel, which is pretty respectable for a thin and light device. The key feel does leave a lot to be desired though, with not a lot of feedback on the keys, and the chicklet design doesnt offer any sculpting of the key caps either. The keyboard layout is also very untraditional, with some odd choices in key position which may take a bit to get used to. The Fn key, as an example, shares a half-key with the right Ctrl key. The benefit of this choice is that you can press Fn and Ctrl with one finger, which does work great. The non-standard layout takes a bit to get used to, but the full-size arrow keys and navigation keys on the right do make up for it. Overall, the keyboard is good, but not great.

MSIs trackpad choice is also definitely non-standard, with the Prestige 14 offering an ultra-wide trackpad. The trackpad also features an integrated fingerprint reader built-in to the top left, allowing owners the luxury of having multiple biometric choices for login. The trackpad is a glass unit, and in testing proved to be accurate and smooth. The extra width did not get in the way of typing either. It works very well.

As far as expandability, MSI offers a good selection of ports. The right side of the laptop offers a single USB Type-A connector for USB 2.0, along with a micro SD card slot and headset jack. The left side features two Thunderbolt 4 ports, with the charging also being done over the Type-C connector. Keeping a single USB Type-A port is appreciated, as many people still have and use the older style connector, and offering two Thunderbolt 4 ports allows the laptop to be charged while still accessing the other port for expansion. Some laptop designers go all-in on Type-C, and while it is definitely the future, dongles are not always appreciated, so its great to see MSI continue to offer both choices.

Overall, MSI has crafted a respectable design in the Prestige 14, but there is not the wow factor of some other laptops in the same price range. It feels a bit bland, despite it offering quality materials. It features a thin and light design, but it is not the thinnest or lightest. It offers thin display bezels, but not the thinnest display bezels. It offers a good keyboard and trackpad, but not the best. This Prestige 14 is a very even-keel design. Some flash may help it stick out a bit.

Excerpt from:
The MSI Prestige 14 Evo Review: Testing The Waters Of Tiger Lake - AnandTech

Israeli gymnasts picked up gold and bronze medals in the European Championships on Sunday.

Artem Dolgopyat, 23, won first prize for the floor exercise, with an overall score of 15. He placed third for the vault exercise, behind Belarussian and Ukrainian competitors, with a score of 14.483.

Alexander Myakinin won bronze for the high bar (14.2000 points), coming in gymnasts from Croatia and Lithuania.

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Last year, Dolgopyat won the silver medal in the floor exercise competition of the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, clinching his ticket to the Olympics, which has been postponed until next year amid the pandemic. He is seen as one of Israels greatest hopes for an Olympic medal.

Dolgopyat was twice the Ukrainian national champion in his age group before immigrating to Israel with his family in 2009, at age 12.

Last month, Israeli rhythmic gymnast Linoy Ashram won a gold medal at the European Championships in Kyiv. Ashram narrowly defeated Belarussian Alina Harnasko to take home the all-around title, with a total score of 100.9. Her victory came two days after Israels rhythmic gymnastics team took the gold in the group all-around category. The category included performances using hoops, clubs and balls.

Rhythmic gymnastics is one of Israels stronger sports. Ashram has won numerous medals in recent years and is seen as another of the countrys leading hopes in the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021.

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In the face of so much uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, its tempting to search for answers that might help you regain some sense of control over your life. You might, for instance, find yourself reading the advice of self-appointed health experts and social media gurus, who love to make overblown and often blatantly inaccurate claims about using diet to avoid getting seriously ill from the novel coronavirus and spreading it to other people.

Their arguments can be summed up like this: A population full of strong bodies would effectively stanch the pandemics spread and hasten our return to normalcy. Also, eating the right food and fortifying ones immune system (through vitamins, etc.) is enough to personally inoculate oneself from the worst effects of COVID-19.

As science, its garbage. Worse, emphasizing healthy eating above all else is a way of casting doubt on the necessity of masks, social distancing and, on occasion, the efficacy of vaccines.

This focus on diet is shared by alternative-health gurus, medical quacks, social media grifters, and at least one celebrity chef and former presidential candidate. These people often dont deny Covids existence, or even its virulence. But they often imply that the climate of fear surrounding the pandemic is overblown and that mainstream authorities have deliberately ignored the issue of diet in their safety messaging. The true pandemic, they say, is Americas longstanding preponderance of diet-related disease, such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and obesity.

Perhaps youve seen these ideas echoed by friends on social media, where they tend to proliferate. Or maybe youve seen the misinformation emerge at its source: by various influencers or public figures who advance these claims online, often to audiences in the tens of thousands.

One particularly brazen tweet that was devoid of much context came from the UKs Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist who cites dieting as something of a panacea in the fight against COVID.

As Nicola Guessassociate professor at the UKs University of Westminster and Head of Nutrition at the Dasman Diabetes Institutetells Lifehacker, diet is and has always been an important aspect of ensuring overall health. But there is zero evidence to support claims that eating healthier will protect one from contracting COVID or succumbing to its more serious effects.

She writes in an email:

Eating a healthy diet and...exercise is sensible as it protects us from a lot of diseasesin my view there is no evidence and no justification for pinning healthy eating on COVID-19 (unless you have something to sell). Is it worth trying to eat more healthy during a pandemic if theres a chance it could protect you against severe infection? Sure, because there are no downsides to eating less sugar, junk food etc. Lets just not pretend that its going to prevent someone from getting COVID-19 and even dying from it there are 23-year-old slim athletes who have sadly died.

Eating healthy, exercising, and taking vitamins when needed are great ways to ensure your personal health in a general sensethis is knowledge backed up by over a century of scientific study. Still, its no substitute for a coherent public health policy involving traditional epidemiological tools in the midst of a raging pandemic. Heres what you need to know about the culture of dietary zealotry and how you can spot it in its many forms.

In recent years, dietary evangelists have accrued an increasing deal of clout in the public sphere. The craze has been spurred on by celebrities such as Gweneth Paltrow, whose wildly popular lifestyle brand Goop has touted raw food diets deemed potentially deadly by experts. Podcast host Joe Rogan has also helped amplify the dietary claptrap of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, who advocates a strictly carnivorous diet (both Peterson and his daughter, Mikhaila, claim a red meat diet cured their long standing bouts of depression).

Much of the dietary fundamentalism preaches different methods for boosting general immunity and thus warding off Covid. Paul Saladino, for example, a doctor based in Austin, Texas, recommends chowing down on organ meats and steak. The doctor T. Colin Campbell, on the contrary, is an advocate of whole food, plant-based dieting. He wrote this year: I doubt there are many people who will be content with repeated masking, social distancing, and contact tracing when changing our diet could do so much more, while simultaneously protecting social norms, job security, and our economy. UK celebrity doctor Aseem Malhotra, meanwhile, published a book promising a 21-day route to immunity through conscientious dieting that purports to prevent, improve and even potentially reverse the factors that can cause or worsen COVID-19.

Adherents of the trend arent always doctors. Australian celebrity chef Pete Evans was fined $25,000 by the countrys Therapeutic Goods Administration this year after making outlandish online claims about a device he invented called a Biocharger. Evans was charging $14,000 for the wellness platform, which he claimed was programmed with a thousand different recipes and theres a couple in there for the Wuhan coronavirus. The idea seeps into the echo chambers of YouTube and Instagram, but isnt confined to social media influencers: former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson joined in as well.

David Gorski, M.D., an oncologist and editor at Science-Based Medicine, says the notion that diet can prevent or treat illness is nothing new. The idea that diet can somehow magically enhance the immune system so that we never (or almost never) get sick is a very old alternative medicine fantasy that takes a grain of truth and then vastly exaggerates it.

This kind of dietary dogma is often devoid of the scientific nuance that pervades modern immunology, especially in light of COVID-19s recent emergence and our evolving understanding of the virus.

Dr. David Robert Grimes, a cancer researcher, physicist, and author of The Irrational Ape, builds on that point, saying: dietary zealots often make vague statements about protecting ones immune system, but this is at best a truism and at worst mindless. He explained to Lifehacker that this thinking showcases a complete lack of understanding about immunology.

According to Grimes:

Boosting your immune system is often the last thing you want to do; ask anyone with an allergy, being attacked by their own immune system, for example. During Spanish flu, young healthy people died disproportionately because their immune system over-reacted. Not only do diet evangelists give too much credit to diets ability to modulate immune response, they fail to understand any subtlety whatsoever with it.

Its important to note that many of those who preach the dietary gospel are entrepreneurs or authors in their own right. Saladino peddles dietary supplements in addition to his book; an anonymous meat evangelist who goes by @KetoAurelius on Twitter sells beef liver strips along with a hyper-masculine mantra that lauds the supremacy of beef while casting doubt on the severity of the pandemic.

The appeal of healthy eating makes sense as a tantalizing alternative to the uncertainty posed by government-mandated lockdowns, school closures, and the economic calamity wrought by COVID in the face of paltry fiscal stimulus from the federal government. After all, changing your diet is relatively easy, and wouldnt it be great if all it takes is some moderate self-discipline to make a world of difference?

There is an alluring prospect here. It allows anyone who subscribes to this logic to believe theyre equipped with unspoken knowledge that the mainstream medical community is actively ignoring. According to Grimes, the notion gives [people] a sense of power and well-being: they know the causes and cures to disease, and thus they are effectively impervious to them. This sense of control is entirely illusory, but it often flatters the believers ego.

But consciously, or not, theres an implicit level of victim-blaming that necessarily comes with this kind of individualist approachthat whoever succumbs to COVID-19 must have been doing something wrong.

Gorski says theres a definite blame the victim vibe to these claims. They imply that its the victims fault if he dies of COVID-19 because he didnt eat right or live right. Of course, that leaves out the fact that the biggest risk factors for severe COVID-19 are unalterable: being male and increasing age.

Gorski points out that making individual dietary changes can, in fact, bode enormously positive results in terms of increasing overall metabolic health in the long term, but those lifestyle adjustments often take a huge amount of time.

He tells Lifehacker:

Its possible that by becoming less obese or by partially reversing type II diabetes or heart disease with diet, weight loss, and exercise, one might decrease ones risk of death from COVID-19, but that doesnt help NOW. Such interventions take months to years, not days to weeks.

While youre not going to be able to personally eradicate the spread of misinformation (thats an ongoing job for tech companies), you can equip yourself with enough to recognize all of its hallmarks: it often offers a reductive, quick-fix approach to a multi-faceted dilemma, valorizes individual efforts to protect themselves, sells various lifestyle products, and traffics in inflammatory rhetoric about the current slate of tools used to keep people safe in a pandemic.

See the article here:

You Can't Beat COVID-19 With Diet, No Matter What the Internet Tells You - Lifehacker

December 17, 2020 Morehead State Professor of Biology Dr. Janelle Hare and a group of student researchers published articles in two academic journals in 2020, exploring gene damage in a drug-resistant pathogen.

Students involved in the research were Jordan Carrington, a 2019 biomedical science graduate from Somerset; Megan Peterson, a 2020 graduate with a Master of Science in Biology from Wallingford; and 2020 Craft Academy graduate Kevin Johnson from Rush. Their research involves the pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii, and its response to hybrid proteins. Articles were published in the Canadian Journal of Microbiology and the Microbiology Societys journal, Microbiology.

The article in Microbiology, co-authored by Hare and Peterson, identified that two proteins, not just one, cooperated to control the response to DNA damage that bacteria can make. This helps them stay alive after exposure to certain chemicals or radiation.

The article in the Canadian Journal of Microbiology was first-authored by MSU post-doctoral research associate, Dr. Deb Cook, who worked with Hare in mentoring Carrington and Johnson. It tested whether the two proteins that cooperate to control the DNA damage response (UmuDAb and DdrR) directly touch each other to achieve this control. Hare and her team did not find evidence that they did so but found that each of the two proteins can bind to themselves in groups of two. This is common in proteins that bind to DNA to control its use.

The work Hare, Cook, and their students did sheds light on how the DNA damage response system in bacteria can result in bacteria gaining resistance to antibiotics. Not only does the research have important medical ramifications, but it also helps students gain valuable skills.

It teaches the students the importance of the scientific method and quality control, Hare said. It also gives them a real-world view of how the information they learn in the classroom each day is gainedthrough experimentation.

Hare added she and her students are proud of their contributions to the scientific community.

We feel proud of our work, because not all manuscripts are accepted for publication. It is a lot of work and it can be hard to move through the peer-review process. But sharing our work with the larger scientific community is the final goal of any research project, so it feels good to have completed that step, she said. I also hope that their experience boosts their confidence on a personal and future professional level, to know that what they do is important and relevant.

Morehead State offers numerous research opportunities for students in every major. Our Undergraduate Research Fellowship program allows students to participate in academic research with a faculty member as early as their freshman year. Students in the program will have the opportunity to present their research at regional, national and international conferences and publish it in academic journals.

To learn more about research opportunities at MSU, visit http://www.moreheadstate.edu/undergraduateresearch.

For information about programs in MSUs Department of Biology and Chemistry, visit http://www.moreheadstate.edu/biochem, email bioc@moreheadstate.edu or call 606-783-2945.

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MSU students and professor publish research internationally - Morehead State University News

How do you measure freedom of speech? Its not a rhetorical question, though it is a timely one. According to think tank Civitas, the University of Cambridge along with 35 per cent of UK universities now falls into the red category for free speech.

Analysing campus policy, events and a survey, wherein nearly a third of staff reported workplace harassment and bullying, the results of Civitass traffic light ranking just 14 per cent of universities were designated green are enough to make a libertarian squeal. The issue of quantifying something we perceive to be a fundamental right is, once again, making headlines but surely, free speech will be defined differently depending on who youre asking.

Its a problem as old as language itself. My freedom to do or speak as I please can never be absolute if yours is to be total, too. My right to insult you undermines your freedom not to have your feelings hurt. Every system of law strives to balance these conflicting liberties, charting Venn diagrams with varying degrees of mutual reliance between their circles. The Cambridge row, it seems to me, is no different.

One example cited by Civitass researchers involves a eugenicist and a pretty window. The commemorative glass was commissioned in 1989 to honour the legacy of one Sir Ronald Fisher, a fellow (and eventually president) of Cambridges Gonville and Caius College, who died in 1962. Students petitioned the college to remove the window, and, in June this year, the powers-that-be obliged.

Far from striking cold fear into my heart, that story makes me happy. Isnt objecting to something, talking it out and reaching an agreement, completely emblematic of how free speech ought to work?

Theres a dangerous little platitude floating to the surface of my mind, thinking of Fisher and the hoo-ha of his desecrated shrine. You know the one: everyones beliefs deserve respect. That is so patently untrue that I practically convulse when I hear it. Heres a very short extract from a very long list of people whose beliefs, Id venture, do not deserve respect: eugenicists; men who think they can beat their wives; members of the KKK or Britain First; homophobes and cult leaders; and that guy I met at a party who explained hed voted for Brexit because there was a Polish person working at his local Costa. In short, something doesnt become sacred simply because it is sincerely believed, and just because something is sacred doesnt make it any more than a belief.

Lets say that Person A believes trans rights activists are dangerous and wrong. Trans rights activists, on the other hand, believe that Person As views are harmful and reductive. Youll have your own stance on that imaginary stand-off but subtracting personal feeling from the equation, were left with two viewpoints, which would fight to the death if left to their own devices. Should we strive instead for peaceful(ish) coexistence or allow one to triumph a kind of Darwinian showdown of thought?

The dons at Cambridge raised a similar point, voting earlier this month to amend the phrase respectful of to tolerate in a series of updates to free speech rules proposed by the universitys council. Although the switch in terminology might not sound like a leap, the distinction is a crucial one not least because it renders no-platforming practically impossible, for all its prominence in Civitass report.

While the recent news cycle might lead one to believe that no-platforming was hauled from the knapsack of the radical left only a few years ago, its been used as a form of protest since the 1970s. At the 1974 NUS conference, for instance, students resolved to deny a platform to openly racist or fascist organisations or societies in response to the rising profile of the National Front.

While the criteria for such no-platforming has arguably shifted since then, the essential idea remains the same. Especially in an educational environment, surely the right to object to ideas comes under the same banner as the right to have those ideas in the first place? This latest vote might be summarised as you dont have to be nice, just dont veer into hate speech as an instruction to visiting speakers. But again, isnt it subjective? Take Jordan Peterson and Nigel Farage, who both fell prey to the brutal no-platforming brigade of Cambridge before the recent vote. Today, in theory, theyd be welcome but fairs fair. If were hosting the Nigels and Jordans of this world, theyll have to accept a bit of backchat.

Not all ideas are created equal. Some come encased in a carapace built over centuries of repetition that almost obscure them from view the patriarchy, or institutional racism, are so monolithic that its hard to step back far enough to recognise them as ideas like any other, rather than representations of some sacred natural order. Other ideas are new, vulnerable, soft and fledgling rights for anyone not white and/or male are concepts in their societal infancy, and require our careful nurture. They need us to shout louder on their behalf, if only to counterbalance the scales, which place an established system of thought on one pan and a feather on the other.

A spokesperson for Cambridge University says that rigorous debate is fundamental to the pursuit of academic excellence, which is hard to object to; whether that commitment to debate ought to cover the view that some opinions dont deserve a public airing seems less clear. The university will always be a place where freedom of speech is not only protected, but strongly encouraged, continues the statement; thing is, speaking requires spates of listening if its to graduate from monologue to conversation.

The Civitas report will no doubt reignite the old guards accusations of snowflakery See?! They got rid of my favourite eugenics window! but, as ever, the hysteria about woke censorship sheds light on the debates truly fragile side. The freedom to speak, Im afraid, must make room for the possibility of being spoken over.

More here:

Freedom of speech at universities is not under threat it is actually thriving - The Independent

The day before Election Day, I met up with two of my favorite dudes, who happen to be two of the smartest thinkers on race and culture today. We gathered at West Phillys Decisions barbershop, opened 30 years ago by young head-cutters Ty Martin and Suran Cassellean iconic spot where Black men have long gathered to talk life, hoops and, uh, trash.

We were filming a segment for the forthcoming Mike Tollin-produced documentary on the way NBA athletes have fueled social change in this moment of racial awakening.

Related from The Philadelphia Citizen:

WATCH: Virtual Chat With The Last Dance Producer Mike Tollin

The Citizens virtual event found two old pals sharing an intimate conversation spanning life, deathand basketball

Citizen contributor Dr. James Peterson was the first to arrive, and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson was close behind. Dyson, whose new book, Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America, is organized around moving open letters penned to the martyrs of our original sin, from Emmett Till to Elijah McClain, the heartbreakingly gentle 23-year-old who would play the violin to soothe stray cats.

Let Dyson take it from here:

Someone called the cops on you, saying you appeared suspicious as you walked home from a convenience store in the summer of 2019, waving your arms. You wore a ski mask because your anemia made you get cold easily. When the cops arrived, you begged them to truly see you: I am an introvert, please respect the boundaries that I am speaking. You told them you were on your way home and asked them to stop being so aggressiveThe string of words that flowed from your mouth as the cops brutalized you is at once sad, because you tried your best to show that you were a meek and mild soul, and enraging, because it didnt matter what you said. They were hell-bent on smashing your body into no-thing-ness, into not-there-nessYou told them, Im just different. Thats all. Im so sorry. You told them, I have no gun. I dont do that stuff. You promised, I dont do any fighting. Then you pleaded, Why are you attacking me? I dont even kill flies. I dont meat!as if your penchant for peacefulness and your dietary discipline might somehow convince them that your life was worth sparing. But Elijah, you quickly insisted that you didnt have a sense of moral superiority over those who disagreed with your choice: But I dont judge those who do eat meat. You begged them to forgive you. No, my lovely young friend, it is they who need to beg your forgiveness and be held accountable.

This is classic Dyson; for all his insightful commentary, for all his connecting of cultural dots to advance an argument, and for all his speaking of truth to power (as when he upbraids others in the Black church for their homophobia), there is never anything bloodless in Dysons take.

Every character upon whom he fixes his literary gaze, like Elijah McClain, is flesh and blood, someone who breathes and loves, and whom other human beings love and need.

Thats why we asked Dyson to close out our third annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival, because he has a way of speaking hard truths in a way that nonetheless lead us to hope. And we need us some hope in these times.

For now, heres a snippet of our conversation that day. I had noticed that Dyson dedicated his book to one LeBron James:

To: LeBron James

Greatest basketball player on the globe

In the conversation for G.O.A.T.

Founder of the I Promise School for at-risk children

Media mogul

Global business magnate

Transformative Philanthropist

Outspoken social activist who refused to shut up and dribble

Started at the bottom, now youre here

For standing with Black people without excuse or apology

And for embracing people of all races around the world

Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrifiedYou have no idea how that cop that day left the houseYou dont know if he had an argument at home with his significant other. You dont know if his kids said something crazy to him and he left the house steaming. Or maybe he just left the house thinking that today is going to be the end for one of these Black people. Thats what it feels like. It hurts.

LeBron James

Larry Platt: Do you make the case that LeBron is the most impactful social change agent athlete weve hadeven more than Ali?

Michael Eric Dyson: The most impactful ever, no question. And let me tell you why. Ali, over the three years he faced imprisonment over his refusal to fight in Vietnam and was barred from fightingthey snatched his crown, and we never got to see him in his heyday. Thats an amazing thing to think about. So he responded in reaction to that. LeBron has been proactive at the height of his career, at the height of his fame, and hes leveraged everything he has. [Michael] Jordan had to wait, what, 20 years after he left the game to write a $100 million check now? No disrespect to MJ, but LeBron is doing all this at a cost thats very interesting to me.

LP: And, unlike Ali, I guess youre saying, LeBron wasnt driven to act by his personal victimhood, by something that was done to him?

MED: Thats right, LeBrons racial empathy is off the charts. But to me, its in concert with what hes been doing all along. Hes been changing the game in a way Jordan never thought to. By developing the first truly Big 3, [when James recruited fellow stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to play with him in Miami] they consciously coupledif we can borrow the Gwyneth Paltrow termand changed the economics of the game in a very fundamental fashion. Black men in control of their destinies in a game whose coffers are filled by them.

LP: He basically declared himself the general manager of the team. It was like a laborer saying, Okay, Im management now.

MED: And in the process he has reversed so many of the usual racial rituals. Theres nobody in his class, on the court, or as a change agent off it.

LP: Weve talked about this before. My concern is that the racial awakening after the execution of George Floyd will fade before we get to real systems change. When it comes to social justice, it always feels like Groundhog Day.

MED: But see, Black folk are used to repetition. Its always circular. You start, white folk get interested, then they fall out of interest. We then leverage what we have at that point. We keep moving. So Black people and other allies have to keep moving and keep strategizing even during the moments when theres a lull. You keep talking, you keep planning. Then when it catches fire among white folk, you capitalize.

But lets also put a little burden on white people. George Floyd? Like no disrespect to Mr. Floyd. But George Floyd is what awakened you? Not Emmett Till? There was a thing called slavery, dont know if you heard about it? There was a thing called Reconstruction that was quickly snatched from under the feet of Black people, read Black Reconstruction by DuBois, 1935.

Look at what happened with Jim Crow, look at what happened with separate but equal, look at what happened with sharecropping, where Black people were getting systemically ripped off, look at the book Slavery By Another Name by my man Douglas Blackmon. In other words, there has been so much information and knowledge but you can never predict what will kick off a movement.

LP: How do we insure that the opportunity of this moment isnt squandered?

MED: The thing about that is, this younger generation says thats a question white folk gotta answer, right? Cause, they say, weve been doing our job. Weve been marching for social justice, weve been addressing democracy. But when you have the resurgence of white supremacy and white nationalism and white folk are saying, hey, what else can we do? Well, go home and tell your white people to stop that crap. Thats what you can do.

But lets give credit where credit is due. To me, this is a different generation of white folk.The reason this is the biggest set of social protests in history is because a bunch of white folk got involved as well. And white folk not just merely on the street, but their bodies at stake. I talk about it in Long Time Coming their bodies are at stake in a way they werent before. Look at the two people who got killed in Kenosha, in the Black Lives Matter protest white men! And the third who got shot.

So there is a level of investment and empathy that translates white concern into something thats very tangible, that is actionable, and that demands we form a coalition to get things done. To me, thats something to celebrate and acknowledge and not just pass off as just another cycle. This is something layered, something different than what weve seen before.

See the original post here:

Michael Eric Dyson on how not to waste this moment of racial awakening - The Philadelphia Citizen

Jordan Graham's supernatural horror film interweaves home video footage and occult testimonials from his own grandmother.

Don't ever let anyone tell you there's no original ideas in horror anymore. Sator, a new indie chill-festwritten, directed, produced, edited, scored, andshot by Jordan Graham, blends the foggy deep-woods supernatural horror of The Witch with his family's real-life accounts of the occultincluding actual testimonials from his grandmother,June Petersonto create a singularly unique horror hybrid.Below, we're hyped to exclusively bring you the Sator trailer in all its tension-building glory.

The film follows a man named Adam, recently rocked by a mysterious death in the family, who delves into the history of an insidious presence known as Sator that he believes has been stalking his bloodline for centuries. The script, based on Graham's actual family and their claims of making contact with Sator over the years, blends its narrative fiction with haunting home video footage and Peterson's real recollections.

Sator is quite personal to me, Graham said. It delves into my familys dark history with mental illness surrounding a supernatural entity, and uses home video footage to create an interwoven piece between documentary and fiction.

Check out the trailer below, followed by the film's official poster. Sator will debut on VOD on February 9, 2021. The film also starsMichael Daniel, Aurora Lowe, Gabriel Nicholson, and Rachel Johnson.

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Here is the official synopsis for Sator:

Secluded in a desolate forest home to little more than the decaying remnants of the past, a broken family is further torn apart by a mysterious death. Adam, guided by a pervasive sense of dread, hunts for answers only to learn that they are not alone; an insidious presence by the name of Sator has been observing his family, subtly influencing all of them for years in an attempt to claim them.

"Everything about this movie could go horribly wrong, which makes it so exciting to me."

Vinnie Mancuso is a Senior Editor at Collider, where he is in charge of all things related to the 2018 film 'Aquaman,' among other things. You can also find his pop culture opinions on Twitter (@VinnieMancuso1) or being shouted out a Jersey City window between 4 and 6 a.m.

Original post:

Sator Trailer Reveals a Deeply Horrifying Hybrid of Fiction and Fact - Collider

2020 has been a year, not least because much of the world pivoted to remote work. Industries that typically rely on in-person connections, like fitness and religious institutions, found themselves having to engage their audiences through live streams. Ad revenue disappeared from influencers and YouTubers, who are used to working remotely so long as they make money. Fashion influencers whose livelihoods depend on peddling an image of beauty and aspirational clothing were without events to attend or reasons to get dressed. Everyone needed to adapt.

In this piece, we look back on a few people we previously interviewed this year to hear how their remote transition has gone do they anticipate staying remote? What have they learned from this challenging year? And will we collectively agree to forget 2020 ever happened and try to resume normalcy in 2021?

Check out what they said below, and click through on the posts to read the original pieces mentioning them.

In March, Mancao began pivoting her therapy Instagram account to address COVID-related stress and anxiety. She had just posted her first couple test posts covering the pandemic, including one called COVID-19 Compassionate Reminders, which suggested checking in on friends and family who are immunocompromised and donating to small businesses that might be struggling. She saw her Instagram as a way to reach people who might be interested in therapy but might not be able to financially afford it.

Nine months later, Mancao says shes actually moved her content away from pandemic-related topics because ample information is already available, and COVID content overload can really exhaust and burn people out. Shell post about the pandemic if necessary, though, like when she recently posted about setting boundaries with friends and family who might want to hang in-person.

Although Macaos business has managed to stay afloat with new clients, she says other therapists she knows have struggled. Clients lost their insurance and income and can no longer afford services.

Many of her clients talk about burnout and the struggle with working, living, and having time off all in the same place: their home. She herself has focused on practicing what she advises, like not working from her bed and finding a routine that works for her.

This year really taught us to find that balance between staying connected and having boundaries, she says. Instagram is still a powerful, and free, place for her to spread information, but shes found that throughout 2020, a post caption doesnt capture the nuance of every situation and circumstance.

While she decorated her tree this past weekend, Canon Vicar Dana Colley Corsello began praying for past parishioners, friends shes traveled with, her mother and others who have gifted her ornaments over the years. Dana encourages us to think of and pray for the people in our lives as we string lights and hang ornaments in the coming days. Thank you for joining us for this service of Morning Prayer and Reflection. Your support is appreciated! *Please note that these services are filmed in advance.*

Eckstrom and the team at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, were preparing for virtual Easter services when we last chatted. The team had already been streaming live services on Sundays, but Easter was a major test of their remote work. Its an essential day for the cathedral, which is typically packed with 3,000 people in the building. The remote operation involved only 10 people in the building at once with the clergy tailoring the service to the pandemic. They took spiritual communions in which they consecrated the bread and wine without actually consuming it. They said a special prayer, too, which expressed that they wanted to take communion but couldnt at that time.

The team is now preparing for Christmas services, and in the months since the pandemic started, the cathedrals services have reached 1.8 million people and average between 6,000 and 7,500 people streaming Sunday morning services. The cathedral team has focused its live stream efforts on how best to make services resonate remotely, rather than making them an afterthought.

We will be doing essentially two separate versions of the same thing for the foreseeable future, and thats a kind of a radical shift for us to put as much energy and attention into an online experience as we are into the in-person experience, Eckstrom says.

Although some global viewers might eventually return to their home church when cities, states, and countries eventually open up, Eckstrom says some attendees say the virtual ceremonies have become a routine they want to continue. The cathedral considers the online world a second location at this point and will continue to stream after the pandemic wanes.

At the same time, however, monetizing the streams hasnt been easy, especially with no in-person visits. The cathedral anticipates a loss of $5 million this year, mainly because of the lack of tourists buying things in the gift shop and caf, and from the loss in event rentals. The team now solicits online donations, and although people have given money, it hasnt made up for the lack of in-person visitors.

People want to make a visceral physical connection, he says. And thats really hard to replicate online. We can use some of [the in-person cathedral experience], but not all of it, so were really anxious to be able to reopen the door, so that people can have that experience that weve been working on developing for about 113 years.

Theo Gove-Humphries and Bee Roper had planned, before the pandemic, to fly themselves and their van from the UK to Canada and make their way throughout North America. But as soon as their visas were approved, Canada banned most inbound flights. The UK then shut its borders, too. The couple decided to move into the home of a friend, who themselves was stuck abroad, and focused on writing an ebook about their Scandinavian travels. YouTube sponsorship opportunities slowed down and their ad revenue decreased, so they need to find a way to diversify their income.

Gove-Humphries and Roper say their YouTube revenue is back, and theyre thriving on the platform now that everyone is stuck at home and streaming videos. They left the UK as soon as they could and traveled to Portugal where they own property and a barn, which theyve focused on fixing up. This is the first time theyve lived in a house in six years.

Owning the land where we are right now in Portugal was one of our best decisions because living in a van full-time, its all fine and well, but I always had that feeling that we never really belonged somewhere, like there was nowhere to fall back on, says Gove-Humphries. So having our own land where we can go, where we know that were not going to be moved on, or we know that were legally allowed to be here, is quite good. Even if youre not here, its good for your mental health to know that you have got somewhere to fall back on, and this worked out brilliantly.

Roper says multiple people they know, fellow vanlifers, looked into buying their own homes since the pandemic for this same reason.

It is quite scary when the whole world locks down, and youve got no way youre allowed to be, she says.

Still, they look forward to traveling again. Their original North America trip is still on the table, but theyre thinking itll happen in 2022 rather than next year, realistically.

Katie Baki almost immediately started hosting donation-based yoga classes on Zoom when the studios she worked at shut down in March. She appreciated being able to see students practice when their cameras were on and being able to record classes for later. She managed to set the mood by emailing her students Spotify playlists so they could recreate the yoga class ambiance in their own homes.

Baki now teaches four classes remotely a week for her own clients and two classes for a virtual studio. Her clients have stuck with her throughout the pandemic, which she greatly appreciates, but she says finding new students is seemingly impossible without the reach of in-person classes. Plus, she now competes directly with bigger studios that can afford to charge less than her.

I dont know if its sustainable, to be completely honest, she says. Im sure that there are ways, but the teachers that Ive spoken with, every yoga teacher is struggling. A lot of them only teach once a week, and a lot of students expect them to be free classes, and our industry got hit really, really hard, and its been challenging.

Zoom classes have more or less acted like a Band-Aid on a large wound for Baki, and shes ready to get back to in-person classes. She might continue teaching a couple remotely for viewers outside of her area, but otherwise, in-person classes are where she feels both she and the students get the most benefit.

Elizabeth Savetskys fashion Instagram feed pivoted quickly when the pandemic took hold in the US. Instead of her usual glitzy looks and fun event photos, she posted herself with minimal makeup and her natural, wavy hair. She sang to her followers, who never knew she had a nice singing voice. She couldnt rely on the same style or type of content she had been making previously, and couldnt hire a photographer to help her take photos. At the same time, she had to strike the right tone and figure out what her followers wanted they loved her luxurious, cool looks before, but would they still want that when they were all at home wearing sweatpants?

After months of being stuck at home, Savetsky says her followers seemingly want lighthearted, aspirational content again. She participated in her first professional photoshoots in around six months recently and says her followers crave a fantasy world where they could be dressing up and celebrating the holidays.

People arent traveling, she says. People arent getting to do their normal holiday season glamorous gatherings and parties and all of that, and so to be able to give them a little bit of that on Instagram is, thats kind of [my] angle.

Thats only the Instagram grid, however. Savetsky says throughout the pandemic shes given her followers a peek into her real life, and they likely will want that to continue. The brands want that, too. Savetsky says the brand deals are coming back to her account but now involve more focus on her struggles and day-to-day life. Her followers are buying from her posts, too, she says, which she thinks reflects the lack of spending in other areas of their lives, like travel.

I feel like my audience really responds to this real factor. Its nice to have the fantasy, but its not relatable, and people want to see your everyday life, especially when the world is hurting, she says. I think its kind of shown me that its not about the setting, or about the product, but its about me, and people wanting a window into my life.

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We asked an influencer, yoga teacher, and others how their pandemic pivots went - The Verge