Send Your Name to Mars

NASA plans to launch its Perseverance rover to Mars, with a launch period between July 30 and August 15. The first launch attempt will be tomorrow, July 30, and the trip will take about 7 months. Did you know that you can be a part of the mission? You can send your name to Mars!

A placard commemorating NASA's “Send Your Name to Mars” campaign was installed on the Perseverance Mars rover. It contains 3 microchips with more than 10 million names of people who signed up before the deadline. The names were stenciled onto the chips using electron beam engraving. If you had previously signed up, you can retrieve your boarding pass. If you missed the time window to have your name etched into one of the chips, you can send you name to Mars in a future mission.

The “Send Your Name to Mars” campaign is intended to generate interest in NASA Mars missions. To find out more, visit https://mars.nasa.gov. From there, you can learn about prior and future missions to Mars. And if you join at the right time, you’ll be able to watch the launch broadcast.

Handwashing Technology

Since we’re in the middle of a pandemic, personal hygiene is of paramount importance. Handwashing is one of the best ways to remove germs, avoid getting sick, and prevent the spread of germs to others.

Apple has added a handwashing feature to watchOS 7. If the Apple Watch detects handwashing motions and sounds, it starts a 20-second countdown timer and prompts the user to keep washing hands if the user finishes early. Handwashing activity is tracked don the iPhone Health app.

A recent publication in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association reports that in hospital settings, a computer vision algorithm can be used to detect hand hygiene activity. The computerized technology performed as well as humans for detecting hand hygiene dispenser use, and it has the obvious advantage of being able to perform continuous surveillance.

When was the last time you washed your hands?

MLB Virtual Fans: Fake News?

Yesterday I was surfing through channels on television and came across a Major League Baseball (MLB) game on FOX Sports. The standard camera angle from behind the pitcher that shows the batter at home plate showed no fans in the most expensive seats in the stadium behind home plate. However, the batter hit a fly ball to right field, and on the replay I saw a packed section of fans in the seats beyond right field. How strange, I thought, that the stadium would limit attendance and not spread out the fans so they could socially distance. Then in another angle, all of the seats in the outfield were empty—what happened to those fans in right field? Surely the views of the empty stadium must be the correct representation of reality. I suspected that computer technology was used to populate the fans. But why does the audio sound like there is a stadium full of fans? Surely that must have been made up too because the crowd didn’t seem to react as they normally would to balls, strikes, hits, and outs.

As strange as it seemed to me, this was planned and announced by FOX Sports on 7/23/2020:

No fans? Not on FOX Sports.

Thousands of virtual fans will attend FOX’s MLB games this Saturday. pic.twitter.com/z9oQU0rYuC

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) July 23, 2020

Personally I found it confusing and unsettling to see alternating images of full and empty seats in the broadcast of a single game. I think the technology is pretty cool, but the experience seemed artificial to me, and I would have rather seen empty seats and not heard the artificial crowd noise.

That being said, here are some things that I think are acceptable use of technology during a sports broadcast:

• All sports: instant replays
• Football: 1st and Ten system for virtual first down markers
• Tennis: Hawk-eye line-calling system
• Swimming, track & field, and others: timekeeping system
• Golf: ball flight path tracing

All of the above examples are applications of technology that enhance the viewer’s ability to understand what is happening (or what happened) in the game or to ensure that the sport is being played or called fairly. However, the application of virtual fans crosses the line not just because it is inconsistently implemented (which results in confusion) but more importantly because it does not represent the reality of the situation. It just seems disingenuous to me. More information in this article. Your thoughts?

On Professional Photography

I’ve always considered myself a photography hobbyist or enthusiast. I enjoy the process of taking photos, processing the RAW files, and sometimes playing around with HDR, panoramic stitching, masking, and/or converting my photos into home movies. Sometimes people compliment me on my photos by saying, “You’re a professional photographer!” While I appreciate such comments and recognize that they usually mean that my photos may appear to be of “professional” quality, I usually reply by stating that a professional photographer actually makes money from their photos, unlike me.

Every now and then, I post what I consider to be one of my better photos to a site called 500px. While Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sties feature plenty of photos, 500px tends to be used by enthusiasts and “professional” photographers, so the composition and image quality of the photos you’ll see there are significantly better. One feature of 500px is that users can sell their photos. Today I received an email notification that I made a sale!

While $1.73 is not a whole lot of money, I now satisfy a very loose definition of what a professional photographer is: I made money from my photography! And technically speaking, if you look back at my sales history, I became a professional photographer back in June 2014:

However, my first sale was a little unusual. I sent my parents a link to my gallery to share some of my favorite photos, and my mom actually bought one of them. I told her that I could have sent her a copy of the photo for free, but that wasn’t the point—she just wanted to show support. After all, that’s what moms do.

Today’s purchase by Getty Images, however, is completely legitimate. Clearly I need to use a stricter definition of “professional photographer”—it makes more sense to define it as someone who depends on earnings from their photography, in whole or at least in part, to make a living. By that definition, I am certainly not a professional photographer, but I still enjoy being a hobbyist.

Enabling FaceTime Camera in Parallels Desktop

For work, I run a Windows 10 virtual machine using Parallels Desktop on a 15-inch 2016 MacBook Pro. Although I’ve shared my desktop using applications like Webex, GoToMeeting, Teams, and other web conferencing applications via the Windows 10 virtual machine, I never needed to use my FaceTime camera until our company recently transitioned to remote working due to the pandemic. The problem I encountered is that none of the web conferencing applications on my Windows 10 virtual machine were able to share video from my built in FaceTime camera.

As a quick workaround to enable video sharing through the FaceTime camera, I simply installed Webex, GoToMeeting, Teams, and other web conferencing applications on my Mac, and that worked fine. Today I finally configured all the settings on my Windows virtual machine to enable my Windows 10 applications to use the FaceTime camera. Here’s what to do:

1. In Parallels Desktop > Configuration > Hardware > Sound & Camera, check the “Share the Mac camera with Windows” checkbox
2. In macOS System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy, enable Parallels Desktop to use the Camera
3. In the Windows virtual machine > Device Manager, check to see if there are any errors with the camera configuration (e.g., driver issues)
4. In the Windows virtual machine > Settings > Privacy, make sure the “Allow apps to access your camera” setting is toggled to On

With all of these settings needing to be configured in different places, it’s no wonder that I needed to consult a Parallels Desktop Knowledge Base article to complete the configuration. I hope this helps you access your FaceTime camera in Parallels Desktop virtual machines if you’ve had similar issues.

The Controversial Birth of HHS Protect

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been gathering data about COVID-19 patients via its National Healthcare Safety Network throughout the course of the current pandemic and has historically been the primary federal source of data collection for infectious disease outbreaks in the United States. According to the New York Times, this data includes “daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.”

On July 10, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ordered hospitals to bypass the CDC and send data directly to a new HHS website. That new website is called HHS Protect and went live on Monday, July 20, 2020.

This move was met with skepticism by critics of the current administration for 2 main reasons. The first reason is that CDC has refined its data collection methods over many years, whereas the implementation of a new data collection system is felt to be a risky move in the middle of a pandemic. The other concern is related to fear of a reduction in transparency regarding the data, especially when the question of whether to reopen businesses and schools should largely be answered based on reliable data.

As a result, more than 100 industry groups signed a letter asking Vice President Pence, Ambassador Birx and HHS Secretary Azar to reverse its decision to bypass the CDC for the collection and analysis of COVID-19 patient data. The American Medical Informatics Association also published an open letter stating similar concerns. The folks running the COVID Symptom Study are pleading to its voluntary users to keep using the app to help detect new COVID-19 cases earlier, stating concerns about possible lack of transparency with HHS Protect.

I doubt that HHS will reverse course, so official hospital reporting will now be channeled through HHS Protect. According to the HHS order, options for data submission include:

1. Submission through one’s state
2. Submission via TeleTracking
3. Authorization of one’s health IT vendor
4. Publication to the hospital website in a standardized format (pending implementation)

HHS Protect currently includes a limited number of data visualizations but also provides access to a downloadable dataset through HealthData.gov.

COVID-19 Household Pulse Survey

I received a text message from an unknown sender (SMS short code 39242) today. It said that “The US Census Bureau needs your help to understand coronavirus impact” and provided a link.

Initially I suspected that this could be a phishing attempt or some kind of scam, but I noticed that the domain of the URL was covid.census.gov, so I decided to check it out. It’s a survey website that is managed by the U.S. Census Bureau. It clearly stated that this was different than the national census and that they are trying to understand the social and economic effects of COVID-19 on American households.

At the bottom of the survey web page, it references “OMB No.: 0607-1013” so I searched Google and found an entry in the Federal Register that provides context for the Household Pulse Survey:

The Census Bureau has developed the Household Pulse Survey as an experimental endeavor in cooperation with five other federal agencies. The survey is designed to produce near real-time data in a time of urgent and acute need. Changes in the measures over time will provide insight into individuals' experiences on social and economic dimensions during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. This survey, conducted under the auspices of the Census Bureau's Experimental Data Series (https://www.census.gov/​data/​experimental-data-products.html), is designed to supplement the federal statistical system's traditional benchmark data products with a new data source that provides relevant and timely information based on a high quality sample frame, data integration, and cooperative expertise.

Question domains contributed by the Census Bureau (Census), Economic Research Service (ERS), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and the Department of Housing (HUD) seek to measure employment status, spending, food security, housing, health, and education disruptions. Many of the questions that will be asked on this survey have been fielded on other surveys in the past. However, some of the questions are new, designed to explore potential impacts associated with the COVID-19 pandemic response.

After I completed the survey, it provided a link to a website for more information. Apparently data for this survey have already been collected for 10 weeks, and the website provides links to an interactive tool, data tables, and public use files where you can explore the responses to date on your own.

Unlock Your Mac with Apple Watch

The other day my MacBook Pro prompted me with a notification that I could unlock the computer with my Apple Watch. I’ve had both the MacBook Pro and Apple Watch for more than a year, and while I normally leave my Bluetooth off, I had turned it on that morning to connect a wireless mouse, so my Mac made a discovery and a timely recommendation.

To enable unlocking your Mac with your Apple Watch, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy and check the “Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac” checkbox.

In order for this checkbox to appear, you must have both watchOS 3 or later and macOS Sierra or later, see these system specifications for more info. Also make sure your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are enabled. Finally, make sure your Mac and Apple Watch are both logged in to iCloud with the same Apple ID. This will enable your watch to talk to your Mac.

The next time you wake your Mac from sleep, your Mac will say, “Unlocking with Apple Watch…”

Moments later… viola! Your Watch should vibrate and prompt you with a confirmation:

For more information, visit the official Apple support page. Keep in mind that your Apple Watch must first be unlocked in order for it to unlock your Mac. This makes perfect sense for obvious security reasons, but unfortunately it greatly diminishes the convenience of this feature for me because I remove my watch from my wrist several times a day (e.g., for charging, showering, dishwashing), and I usually don’t re-enter the password after donning the watch. Therefore, the auto-unlocking is hit or miss for me. But if you normally re-enter your password after putting on your watch, or if you rarely remove your watch, you might have a better experience with this feature.

Apple iPhone Performance Settlement

You may have heard about a class action lawsuit against Apple a couple years ago. The complaint was that Apple’s iOS software diminished the performance of Ale devices, and it did so in a way that users were unaware of the diminished performance. Many people felt that this kind of performance throttling was a devious attempt to encourage users to upgrade to newer iPhones, and this controversy was dubbed Batterygate. Apple has always maintained that the performance reductions were put in place to optimize the user experience by reducing unexpected shutdowns that stem from insufficient power due to aging lithium batteries.

Nevertheless, Apple has reached a settlement which is detailed in Apple Inc. Device Performance Litigation Case No. 18-MD-2827-EJD. If you are or were a U.S. owner of an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, and/or SE device that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later before December 21, 2017, and/or a U.S. owner of an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus device that ran iOS 11.2 or later before December 21, 2017, you could be entitled to benefits under a class action settlement.

To claim your rebate of up to $25 per eligible device, visit https://www.smartphoneperformancesettlement.com and submit a claim form. Check out the FAQ for more information.

New Math for Estimating Dog Age in Human Years

There is a common saying that to estimate a dog’s age in human years, simply multiply the dog’s age by 7. However, it is known that dogs and humans don’t reach physiological milestones at the same rate over their lifespans. For example, dogs can reach reproductive age between 6-12 months which is earlier than humans, even if you multiply by 7.

Researchers have recently published a report that suggests a non-linear relationship between dog age and human age. When comparing DNA methylation changes over time among 104 Labrador retrievers against that of humans, the relationship between dog years and human years can be represented by the following formula:

human_age = 16 ln(dog_age) + 31

According to the researchers, “We found that this function showed strong agreement between the approximate times at which dogs and humans experience common physiological milestones during both development and lifetime aging, i.e., infant, juvenile, adolescent, mature, and senior.”

For more information, see the full report.

Bonus tip: if you want to calculate your dog’s age in human years, you can’t calculate natural logarithms in your head, and you don’t have a calculator, just go to www.google.com and search for “16*ln(dog_age)+31” where dog_age is your dog’s age in years. For example, if you search for 16*ln(5)+31, you’ll find that your 5 year old dog has an equivalent human age of 53.18 years, physiologically speaking.

Canon Full Frame Mirrorless Cameras: R6 and R5

It’s been a while since I’ve written about photography, partly because I haven’t done much photography lately while sheltering in place, and partly because I haven’t seen any interesting developments. Things changed on July 9 when Canon introduced the EOS R6 and EOS R5. These are full frame mirrorless cameras targeted to professionals (and enthusiasts who don’t balk at the price tags).

Although Canon was relatively late to the mirrorless game and has been playing catchup with Sony, they do have a lineup of mirrorless cameras and introduced their first full frame mirrorless camera with the EOS R in 2018.

Both the R6 and R5 raise the bar in terms of photo and video quality over the R, with the most significant improvement being the addition of in-body image stabilization which the R lacked (it depended on image stabilization built into the lens). This should improve low light photography which is a common scenario that I face when capturing moments indoors (e.g., birthday parties, performances/recitals, family gatherings). It should also reduce camera shake for videos.

Another improvement is in the ISO range for the R6 which has a native ISO range of 100-102,400 (expandable to 204,800) which is an improvement over the R which has a native ISO range of 100-40,000 (expandable to 102,400). The top-of-the-line R5 has a native ISO range of 100-51,200 (expandable to 102,400) whose lower ISO might have been a compromise due to its enormous pixel count.

Another improvement is in video resolution. Whereas the R is capable of 4K video, it tops out at 30 fps. The R6 ups the frame rate for 4K video to 60 fps. Meanwhile, the R5 not only shoots 4K at 120 fps, it also introduces 8K video at 30 fps in both RAW and H.265 formats.

Regarding megapixel (MP) count, The R6 has a modest 20 MP which is lower than the R which has 30.3 MP. The R5 raises the bar to 45 MP. I personally don’t put a whole lot of weight into the MP count since a vast majority of my photos are intended to be viewed online or converted into 1080p videos, so my current Canon EOS Rebel T4i with 18 MP is more than sufficient for those purposes, and I’ve also created 24x36 inch prints which look fine. Then again, I’m an enthusiast/hobbyist, and professional photographers may have different needs.

There are many other new features and specifications in the R6 and R5, but to sum up these 2 new cameras, the R6 is more geared toward pro-level photographers who need better low light performance, and the R5 is better for pro-level photographers who also demand higher quality video. Regardless, this is another indicator that mirrorless cameras have a role in professional photography and that DSLRs will eventually fade away.

H.266/VVC Has Arrived

According to an announcement by Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, a new video compression standard has been released: H.266, also known as Versatile Video Coding (VVC). The impact of this new standard is that the size of videos that are encoded with the VVC specifications (whether saved as a file or streamed over the internet) will be significantly smaller than videos that are encoded with older specifications.

The predecessor to H.266/VVC was H.265 which is also known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). H.266/VVC compresses videos to approximately half the size as H.265/HEVC, assuming the same quality settings. Prior to H.265/HEVC, we had H.264 which is also known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC) or MPEG-4. H.265/HEVC compresses videos to approximately half the size as H.264/AVC. Prior to that, we had MPEG-2. And you guessed it, H.264/AVC compresses videos to approximately half the size as MPEG-2.

Although we have a new H.266/VVC specification, it will take some time for developers to widely adopt it. In fact, even though the H.265/HEVC specification was released in 2013, it was announced at WWDC 2017 that Apple would begin to support it. The September 2019 Bitmovin Video Developer Report shows that 91% of developers implement H.264/AVC, whereas only 43% of developers implement H.265/HEVC.

I would imagine that there will be a similar lag time for the adoption of H.266/VVC. However, given that I don’t have a burning need to stream 4K or 8K videos, I think I can wait several years for it to be adopted into the mainstream.

Did You Stream “Hamilton” Too?

Over the Independence Day weekend, our family did what millions of other American did: watch the movie version of “Hamilton” on Disney+. Curious to see some statistics, I found a story on TechCrunch that provides some interesting statistics and graphics that are credited to Apptopia (subscription required). They are self-explanatory, so I will simply re-post them here:

Also noteworthy is that Hamilton was the most downloaded content launch of 2020. Trailing behind Hamilton are Frozen 2, Onward, Artemis Fowl, and others. By any measure, it was a big success and a victor for Disney+ in the streaming wars.

LitCovid

If you’ve ever tried to search for medical literature, it is possible that you’ve used PubMed, a bibliographic database that contains more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. While it is possible to simply type a keyword or two and get search results, the ability to find what you’re looking for depends on your ability to leverage the rich metadata (e.g., medical subject headings, authors, publication dates, title words) that are associated with every citation.

Nowadays many people are searching PubMed for literature related to COVID-19. However, there is complexity in how research is performed and reported on the topic. For starters, the virus (SARS-CoV-2) and the clinical disorder (COVID-19) are two entirely different things. To complicate matters, there are many variations in how people name and abbreviate both the virus and the clinical disorder. The search strings that you would need to enter just to capture literature related to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 can be complex. Enter LitCovid, a curated literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus. It is basically a subset of PubMed citations that is updated daily and contains 28,764 articles as of today, July 5, 2020.

LitCovid articles are captures using a 2-step process. The first step is to run the following search query against PubMed:

"coronavirus"[All Fields] OR "ncov"[All Fields] OR "cov"[All Fields] OR "2019-nCoV"[All Fields] OR "COVID-19"[All Fields] OR "SARS-CoV-2"[All Fields]

The second step is a machine learning-assisted human review process to identify relevant articles and to discard irrelevant search results.

All publications in LitCovid are manually tagged with up to 8 article categories

• General Information: General information and news
• Mechanism: Underlying cause(s) of COVID-19 infections and transmission & possible drug mechanism of action 
• Transmission: Characteristics and modes of COVID-19 transmissions, such as human-to-human
• Diagnosis: Disease assessment through symptoms, test results, and radiological features
• Treatment: Treatment strategies, therapeutic procedures, and vaccine development
• Prevention: Prevention, control, response and management strategies
• Case Report: Descriptions of specific patient cases
• Epidemic Forecasting: Modeling and estimating the trend of COVID-19 spread

Users can filter search results by clicking on these 8 article categories, as well as other filter criteria including Chemicals, Journals, and Countries.

In the FAQ, it is stated that LitCovid tracks publications specific to COVID-19, while the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset contains a broader set of coronavirus literature which includes SARS (caused by SARS-CoV-1) and MERS.

Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker

An Economic Tracker visualizes the percent change in consumer spending since the first COVID-19 case in the United States on January 20, 2020. There are options to filter charts by industry (apparel & general merchandise, entertainment, grocery, health care, restaurants & hotels, transportation) and consumer ZIP income (high, medium low).

Many additional charts are available for exploration including data visualizations related to businesses, employment, education, and public health, each with their own set of filters. Data are also available for download.

Data originate from leading private companies (e.g., credit card processors to payroll firms) and are curated by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard University nonprofit organization whose purpose is to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the economic prospects of people, businesses, and communities across the United States. The Economic Tracker is accompanied by a research paper, non-technical summary, and additional resources.

An article in NPR’s Planet Money summarizes a few key points:

• Decline in consumer spending is mostly in affluent ZIP codes
• Businesses in rich ZIP codes laid off nearly 70% of their employees
• The government rescue effort has failed to rescue the businesses that are most impacted by the pandemic
• State-permitted reopenings don’t seem to boost the economy

The Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker team concludes that traditional economic tools have limited capacity to restore consumer spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they provide a variety of recommendations for policy moving forward. In short, they assert that (1) the only way to drive economic recovery is to invest in public health efforts that restore consumer confidence and spending; and (2) providing and extending targeted assistance to low-income workers impacted by the economic downturn (e.g., unemployment benefits) is critical for reducing hardship and addressing disparities due to the pandemic.

Social Engineering Scam

Yesterday I was posting messages on Facebook that would probably go viral, turn enemies into friends, end racism, and achieve world peace. Although I don’t commonly use the Messenger component of Facebook, a “friend” started a conversation. It began with typical pleasantries but quickly turned weird:

My “friend” turned the conversation to the 2020 Social Grant Assistance Package. Several thoughts went through my head. Was my friend referring to the CARES Act stimulus checks? Did my friend accidentally mistake me for my retired parents? Why was my friend messaging me about this at all (it was an unusual topic for that person to address)?

After I replied “No, I don’t even know what that is”, the reply went into detail about how I may be missing out on $90,000 which almost certainly convinced me that my friend’s Facebook account was hacked, and this was a scam attempt. I called my friend—no reply, so I left a voice message. Then I emailed my friend a screenshot of the conversation. Meanwhile, I asked the alleged scammer to provide the names of my friend’s children, to which the scammer provided the wrong answer despite presumably having access to my friend’s entire Facebook profile.

My friend eventually replied and confirmed that this was in fact a scam. Impersonating someone in a live chat to scam their contacts is quite an audacious approach that I personally haven’t seen before, although it is certainly not very surprising since the ability to do that has been around for a couple of decades. This is just a warning to folks on Facebook and other social media platforms to be careful online.

“Social engineering” refers to exploitation through the use of human psychology as opposed to technical hacking techniques. The term was popularized by Kevin Mitnick, a famous computer hacker who, after his release from prison, helps companies defend against social engineering attacks. Although Mitnick does have technical computing expertise, it was his ability to impersonate and deceive people that made his hacking so effective. Check out this video for more:

For those interested, there is a related book called The Art of Deception. While I was unlikely to fall victim to such a poorly executed social engineering attempt on Facebook, there may be unsuspecting individuals who will surrender personal information and/or money to these kinds of scams. Long story short, humans are often the weakest link when it comes to security breaches. The same principle can apply to scams, so be careful out there.

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I know I’ve shared a lot of COVID-19 data visualizations, but another one that’s worth mentioning is 91-DIVOC: Flip the Script on COVID-19.

I suppose the interactive charts are different enough from other visualizations that they “flip the script” on COVID-19. There are several interactive charts, each with multiple settings that are best summarized by the creator: “There are millions of combinations of graphs to view.” 91-DIVOC uses the Johns Hopkins data that was used to power the CSSE COVID-19 Dashboard that I covered in a prior blog. Hope you enjoy geeking out on this data.