What are these things on strings after the loss of cabin pressure?
They are the holders for the oxygen masks, they are packed into the plastic retainers and stored in the overhead, when the masks drop, they fall out of the containers. Not all systems have these retention pieces that I can find, but some do.

The "black" tubes (actually clear, but look black in the picture) you see are the oxygen mask tubes and the mask itself is dangling from the end of the tube, you can see they have green/red labels on them that signify they are oxygen. The oxygen generator for that group of seats/masks is under the label in the top "HOT HOT", oxygen systems get very hot when generating oxygen (just ask ValuJet).