Space Station alert as crew forced to patch hole in docked spacecraft

NASA

Crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have had to patch a hole in the shell of a docked spacecraft following a possible collision with a meteorite fragment.

Fortunately for the six-person crew, the situation on Thursday never descended into scenes reminiscent of the 2013 Hollywood blockbuster Gravity in which a debris collision caused untold chaos. But with a drop in cabin pressure detected, it was vital for the incident to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

The latest report from NASA describes the space station’s cabin pressure as “holding steady” after the Expedition 56 crew carried out repair work on the hole, which was found on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that docked with the ISS a couple of months ago.

NASA said that after several hours of investigations on Thursday, the crew was able to isolate the leak to a hole about two millimeters in diameter in the upper section of the spacecraft.

Flight controllers at Mission Control centers in Houston and Moscow worked together with the crew to oversee the repair, which involved Soyuz commander Sergey Prokopyev using thermo-resistant tape to plug the hole. A more robust repair is currently under consideration.

NASA insisted that the crew was never in any danger, although flight controllers are still monitoring pressure trends inside the space station to confirm the effectiveness of the repair. All station systems are reported to be stable and the crew is planning to return to its regular schedule of work on Friday.

What caused it?

Investigations are now underway to try to determine what caused the hole. There’s speculation that it may have been the result of a tiny piece of space rock or other debris colliding with the station. Its small size would have made it impossible for the space station’s systems to have detected its approach.

With the ISS traveling at speeds of around 17,500 mph, an impact can pose a serious threat to the operation of the station as well as to its crew. The main structure of the space station has so-called “orbital debris shields” in place to keep it safe from collisions with smaller particles, but the docked capsule appears to be fitted with less effective shielding, if it has any at all.

Besides rocks and other natural space matter, man-made space debris is also a problem for the ISS and other satellites orbiting Earth. NASA has a system in place to monitor larger pieces that could cause catastrophic damage in the event of a collision. The technology enables ground control to track hazardous debris, and if needed, the space station‘s thrusters can be used to take it away from danger.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Boeing suffers setback in space taxi testing
• These astronauts will whiz around Earth 34 times before reaching space station
• Astronauts install hi-def docking cameras for Crew Dragon, Starliner capsules
• Watch inside Soyuz as it blasts astronauts (and toys) into space
• SpaceX delivers CIMON, along with berries and ice cream, at ISS

Garbage to gold: How Yahoo unethically sells your spam email

(in)Secure is a weekly column that dives into the rapidly escalating topic of cybersecurity.

Yahoo’s golden era has passed and Yahoo Mail, once considered a serious competitor to Gmail, is now far less popular. It’s unlikely that you use it for your primary email account. So why should you care about its privacy policy?

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo’s parent company, Verizon, knows you don’t use that old AOL or Yahoo inbox. It knows they’re just full of spam. Yet strangely enough, it’s selling data pulled from it without telling you — and staying alive by doing so.

All your mail are belong to us

The beans were spilled by a leaked Yahoo sales pitch. It detailed the tactics Yahoo uses to collect and sell personal data gained from its email accounts. It’s all laid out in explicit description, outlining not only how Yahoo mines email accounts for data, but why.

Therea Payton, former White House Chief Information Officer to the Bush Administration.

“This isn’t a new practice,” Theresa Payton told Digital Trends. Payton is a cybersecurity expert and the former Chief Information Officer at the White House. “What they do is scan emails, and then group similar users together for targeting. For example, if you have receipts from purchases you’ve made on Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime, they will group you and other email users that have similar receipts into a group, and then sell your data to media companies, TV outlets, and the movie industry.”

On paper, Yahoo isn’t doing anything unlike what Google has done in the past. For thirteen years, Google scanned the email of Gmail accounts and sold that data to advertisers on its Google Ads platform. Considering the amount of people that use Gmail, the amount of relevant data that could be mined was mind-boggling.

That practice has since been halted due to public outcry, but companies with less to lose — like Yahoo — have picked up on the idea and run with it.

Payton believes the Yahoo situation might be more sinister. Part of the problem is the raw capability of technology, which grows year by year, both in terms of processing power and maturity. According to Payton, behavioral-based, big data analytics are at a higher level of sophistication than they were just a few years ago. They can handle more data, so they collect more data.

“That human curation is maybe where the secret sauce is.”

Yet the biggest difference in Yahoo’s implementation is the human element. “There’s also the automated scanning process and then there’s a human curation process,” she said. “That human curation is maybe where the secret sauce is. Things are going to be done to this data that are going to be unique and different from how Google used to treat email accounts in the past.”

There’s no way to know exactly what human eyes scan at Yahoo, but the company’s privacy policies make clear that humans do read some emails. The policy posted by Yahoo’s parent company, Oath, states “when users click on the Spam and Not Spam buttons, information is sent to our anti-spam team or other spam compliance service providers for manual review, and aspects of these messages may be shared […].” The policy also references “manual review” for several other reasons.

Panithan Fakseemuang/123rf

Doug Sharp, Oath’s Vice President of Data, Measurements, and Insights, defended the practice when questioned by The Wall Street Journal. “I think it’s reasonable and ethical to expect the value exchange,” said Mr. Sharp, “if you’ve got this mail service and there is advertising going on.

So, Yahoo is reading emails that arrive in the 200 million inboxes it hosts. But who uses their Yahoo or AOL email account as their primary account these days, anyways? You probably don’t use Yahoo Mail as your main account, so it’s not your concern. Right?

Maybe not. Even the junk you’ve left behind in a secondary account is good enough to sell.

Mining spam for gold

“They actually talked about how a lot of people use their platform to forward their spam mail to,” said Payton. “So, they purely use it as an email address to hand out and let a bunch of marketing material go to. And that could be super helpful to marketers.”

Yahoo knows you don’t care about your Yahoo Mail account and has turned that into a selling point for marketers. Using the same scanning, grouping, and human curation described above, Yahoo has found a way to turn junk mail into sellable data. That might not sound bad, but Payton described a situation that could quickly go from harmless to dangerous.

“This could be their survival mode project to give them the cash influx they need.”

“What if you’re subscribing to Wine & Whisky newsletters — and that information is sold to health insurance companies?” she proposed. “I’m not saying that’s what they’re doing, but the question is, once the data is sold to third-party marketers, how do you know how that data is or is not going to be used or safeguarded?”

It gets even more worrisome when you consider the company Yahoo has become. It was acquired by Verizon in 2017, where it was merged with AOL to form an umbrella corporation known as Oath. That means all the data collected from Yahoo and AOL email accounts are not only shared with third-party marketers, but also distributed throughout the massive company. We’re talking about a lot of data, and a lot of ways to put it to use.

Exploiting what few people it has left

We don’t know how successful Yahoo has been at selling people’s spam. In a post-Cambridge Analytica world, it feels a odd for a company to shamelessly mine personal data as if no one cared — and as if regulatory bodies weren’t paying attention.

Still, we shouldn’t be surprised. Yahoo, like most companies, needs to make money to justify its existence. Mining email data is another way to keep the lights on. The consequences could be severe, but anything can look viable to a company with a lot of red ink on its balance sheet.

Global PR

“Just think about the massive data breach they had and the legal fines that came from that,” said Payton. “This could be them thinking, ‘We’re sitting on a treasure trove of information that we can productize and monetize.’ This could be their survival mode project to give them the cash influx they need.”

Your Yahoo or AOL email accounts may have already been mined for data, but it’s worth heading over to deactivate it if you don’t currently use it. If you do happen to use Yahoo Mail as your primary account, we’d highly recommend disabling access to this kind of invasive scanning. It’s as easy as heading over to the Ad Interest Manager page and clicking on “Opt Out” under the Yahoo banner.

If nothing else, there’s one important lesson we can learn from all this. Data is still the most valuable commodity in the world, even if its out-of-date information tucked away in an abandoned corner of the internet.

Editors’ Recommendations

• If you’re still using Yahoo email, it’s still spying on you
• People are reading your email. Here’s how to make them stop
• The best email clients
• ‘Can I book a table for Thursday?’ Google Duplex duped me, but I didn’t mind
• How to create disposable email addresses

MrMobile’s BlackBerry KEY2 LE Hands-On

You probably don’t need me to tell you that the BlackBerry KEY2 LE is just what it says on the tin: a “lite edition” of the BlackBerry KEY2 we know and (mostly) love. And to be honest, when I first picked up the LE, I was put off by its lighter-weight build, which only served to remind me of the compromises that have been made across the spec sheet to get it down to a manageable price. About the only thing that excited me about the LE was the new Atomic color option.

But then I chatted with some of the people who designed the KEY2 LE, and as you might expect, they had some good arguments for their new product. Of course a daily KEY2 user such as myself isn’t going to be moved by a midrange version of the same phone, they said: the LE is for people who wanted the KEY2 experience but didn’t want to pay $650 for the privilege. As that group is rather thoroughly represented in the comment section of all my KEY2 videos, that point resonated with me. As for my concerns about the lower-end specs leading to a repeat of the KEYone’s sluggish performance? Only time will tell, of course, but the BlackBerry folks didn’t seem too worried: along with everything else drag-and-dropped from the KEY2 to the KEY2 LE (yes, it’s the exact same display panel), the company’s software optimizations have made the jump as well. So it should stay fairly sporty even with the Snapdragon 636 stepping in for the KEY2’s 660.

Of course none of those facts can bring back the capacitive function to the keyboard, or give the KEY2 LE quite the spiffiness I still love about my KEY 2 – but I came away from the conversation with more appreciation for the $399 mid-ranger. Click on through to my hands-on video above for more impressions, including a quick keyboard comparison … and subscribe to theMrMobile on YouTube if you want me to give this device the full review treatment when the time comes!

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UK Deal: Half price Amazon Dash Buttons with £5 credit on first use

Prime members can earn a few quid back when purchasing and using these discounted Dash Buttons.

Amazon Dash Buttons make re-ordering your favorite products quick, easy, and hassle-free. Generally £4.99 each, these devices work wirelessly and will actually place an order on Amazon for you when you press the big silver button on the front. Today, however, Amazon has halved the price of many of its Dash Buttons for popular brands.

Now, that’s a nice deal by itself as you’re saving £2.50 on the buttons of your choice. There’s another added benefit though which makes this deal even sweeter. The first time you press a new Amazon Dash Button, you’ll receive a £4.99 discount credit applied to that order. That means you’ll effectively be making £2.50 in the process when buying and pressing any of these buttons.

Some of the Dash Buttons you can pick up for half price today include:

• Brabantia
• Head & Shoulders
• Illy
• Nescafé
• Regina
• Whiskas

Amazon Dash Buttons are exclusively available to Prime members. However, if you’re not a Prime member, you can try out these buttons, and the rest of the service’s benefits, with a free 30-day trial. Head to Amazon now to see the rest of the discounted Dash Buttons on sale.

For more UK deals coverage, be sure to keep an eye on Thrifter UK, sign up for the UK newsletter and follow the team on Twitter.

See at Amazon UK

Best Buy’s Labor Day sale brings big discounts to iPad, TVs, and more

A few days left to save!

Best Buy has launched its Labor Day sale which runs now through the end of Monday and brings big discounts on a variety of products. Whether you’re looking for a new iPad, Jabra’s Elite 65t wireless ear buds, or a new TV, there’s something here for just about everyone. Some of our favorites from this site-wide sale include:

• $125 off iPad Pro 10.5-inch
• Up to $700 off MacBook Pro models
• $50 off TCL 55-inch Roku TV
• Up to $40 off Corsair PC Gaming Accessories
• SanDisk Flash Drives up to 75% off

In addition to these discounts, students can save even more. Eligible students who have registered for the promotions can stack extra savings on top of the already-discounted pricing. Combine that with some interest-free financing on a Best Buy card and you’ve got yourself a great way to buy some new gear before heading off to school again.

See at Best Buy

All New and Updated App Store Apps Required to Have a Privacy Policy Starting October

Apple has announced that, starting October 3, 2018, all new apps and app updates will require a privacy policy in order to be submitted for distribution on the App Store or through TestFlight for beta testing purposes.

Apple already requires a privacy policy for apps that access personal information, including apps that offer subscriptions, accept Apple Pay, or use Apple frameworks such as HomeKit, HealthKit, or CareKit. Now, the requirement will extend to all apps, including basic ones that do not share data in any way.

It does not appear that existing apps on the App Store will be affected by this move until they are updated on October 3 or later, so long-outdated apps may remain without a privacy policy if they are no longer maintained.

Apple detailed the upcoming changes in the News section of its App Store Connect portal for developers on Thursday:

Starting October 3, 2018, App Store Connect will require a privacy policy for all new apps and app updates in order to be submitted for distribution on the App Store or through TestFlight external testing. In addition, your app’s privacy policy link or text will only be editable when you submit a new version of your app.

To add or edit your privacy policy for the App Store:

1. Go to My Apps in App Store Connect, and click on your app.
2. Under App Store, click on App Information.
3. In the top right corner, add your privacy policy link for iOS apps or macOS apps, or enter text directly for tvOS apps.
4. Click Save.

To add your privacy policy link to your app for external TestFlight distribution:

1. Go to My Apps in App Store Connect, and click on your app.
2. Under TestFlight, click Test Information.
3. Add your privacy policy link for iOS apps, or enter text directly for tvOS apps.
4. Click Save.

Apple elaborates on its privacy policy requirements in its App Store Review Guidelines, under Section 5.1.1:

Privacy Policies: All apps must include a link to their privacy policy in the App Store Connect metadata field and within the app in an easily accessible manner. The privacy policy must clearly and explicitly:

– Identify what data, if any, the app/service collects, how it collects that data, and all uses of that data.

– Confirm that any third party with whom an app shares user data (in compliance with these Guidelines) — such as analytics tools, advertising networks and third party SDKs, as well as any parent, subsidiary or other related entities that will have access to user data — will provide the same or equal protection of user data as stated in the app’s privacy policy and required by these Guidelines.

– Explain its data retention/deletion policies and describe how a user can revoke consent and/or request deletion of the user’s data.

App Store Connect has long provided a privacy policy metadata field for developers to submit a link to their privacy policy webpage for iOS apps. On the Apple TV, there is no web browser, so App Store Connect has a text box for developers to past the full text of their privacy policy displayed in app.

Tags: App Store, App Store Review Guidelines, privacy
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An inside look at how the OnePlus 6 is made

You’ve seen the teardown, now see the OnePlus 6 being put together.

Over the last four years, OnePlus built up a name for itself as a company that caters to power users. OnePlus now sells in most major global markets, but it’s India where the company has seen the most success to date. The Chinese company managed to overtake Samsung as the premium segment in the country earlier this year, a worthy accomplishment from a brand that’s just four years old.

A lot of that comes down to the OnePlus 6, the company’s latest phone. The OnePlus 6 stands out not because of the hardware — there are plenty of phones that offer similar specs — but mainly due to OnePlus’ emphasis on delivering a clean software experience with OxygenOS. Combine that with OnePlus’ obsession over speed, and you get a device that’s one of the fastest available today. It doesn’t hurt that the OnePlus 6 costs roughly half that of the Galaxy Note 9.

So when OnePlus asked me if I’d be interested in touring its factory to see how the OnePlus 6 is manufactured, I immediately jumped at the chance. OnePlus manufactures its phones at a factory an hour’s drive away from Shenzhen, where its headquarters are located. The factory I visited is the main production line, and it also has other facilities around the globe that cater to needs in other markets.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at how the OnePlus 6 comes to life.

The assembly process starts off with the mid-frame. The mid-frame comes from a manufacturing facility that’s located a few miles away, and the first bay in the assembly line houses a machine that drills a series of holes into the mid-frame. Then the panel is affixed to the front using adhesive, and the phone is then sealed in a case and tightened so the glue affixes evenly.

Once the panel is affixed firmly, it’s time to hook up the connectors for the USB-C charging port at the back. Then the haptic motor is connected to the back of the device, to the left of the USB-C port.

Next up is a machine that checks the display for any issues. As the mainboard isn’t hooked up to the phone yet, it is connected to an external machine that cycles the panel through a gamut of colors and scenes to make sure the panel doesn’t have any defects. After the display tests are finished, the device is placed in a case that covers a sizeable portion of the screen to prevent it from taking any damage while on the assembly floor.

Once that’s done, it’s time to connect the camera to the mainboard. The camera sensor is removed from its packaging and slotted into the mainboard. The mainboard also contains the Snapdragon 845 chipset, the UFS 2.1 flash memory module, as well as the LPDDR4X RAM along with the Wi-Fi and baseband modems. Essentially, this is the heart of the phone.

Once the camera module is attached, the mainboard is affixed to the phone, and then the front camera assembly is mounted at the top.

After that, a series of FPC connectors for the screen, 3.5mm jack, and the USB-C port are hooked up to the mainboard.

Interestingly, there’s a water damage indicator that’s located at the bottom. It’s essentially a tiny square of paper that is placed on one of the data cables, and it’ll turn pink as soon as it comes into contact with any water.

After this, a machine scans the screws and the overall assembly to make sure the tolerances are in order and that there are no defects. Once the parts are assembled, the plastic antenna frame is added to the top section, and a similar housing over the bottom section covering the USB-C port and the 3.5mm jack.

That marks the end of the assembly, and now it’s time to slot in the battery. This is fairly straightforward, and the 3300mAh battery has a green pull tab that makes it easy to remove (even though it isn’t easily accessible as you’ll have to remove the glass back to get to it).

The glass itself is manufactured at a third-party supplier, and the first step is to affix the fingerprint sensor cable to the back. That’s the long orange cable you see in the image above. Once the cable for the fingerprint sensor is affixed, it’s time to attach the lens cover over the camera housing.

Now comes the interesting part — attaching the glass back to the phone. A machine stamps the glass back into place, and another machine rolls the sides so the adhesive is firmly affixed.

Once the final assembly is done, it’s time for testing the phone. A battery of tests are conducted on the assembly floor itself — including battery charging tests, display and color accuracy tests, as well as vibration and camera sensor focusing tests.

Once the tests are done, a layer of film is fixed over the entire surface of the phone, and then it’s off to packaging. I always assumed the labels on the back of the box were done by a robot and not by hand, so it was surprising to find that this isn’t the case.

Once the packaging is done, the OnePlus 6 is ready to be put into containers and sent off to various destinations around the globe. The assembly line I went to primarily caters to the Chinese market, as you can make out from the product packaging.

It’s very interesting to see how phones are put together, even more so when you consider the sheer amount of tech that goes into such a small package. Similarly, the scale at which these devices are manufactured is mind-boggling, particularly in a city like Shenzhen. It’s been called the Silicon Valley of hardware, and that label fits once you see just how much of the world’s gadgets are made here.

It’s no coincidence that OnePlus decided to have its global headquarters in Shenzhen — easy access to manufacturing facilities allows the company to go through several iterations of a design in a matter of weeks. That design prowess is immediately evident once you start using the OnePlus 6: the phone feels just as premium as “true” flagships that cost north of $1,000.

I sat down with OnePlus CEO Pete Lau to talk about how the company approaches product design and the challenges it faces in the handset segment, so stay tuned for that next week.

OnePlus 6

• OnePlus 6 review
• OnePlus 6 vs. OnePlus 5T: How much changes in six months?
• OnePlus 6 vs. OnePlus 5: Should you upgrade?
• These are the official OnePlus 6 cases
• The OnePlus 6 doesn’t work on Verizon or Sprint
• Join the discussion in the forums

How to Use Facebook

Judging by its more than 2 billion monthly active users, most everyone has heard of Facebook. However, there are still a few people out there who haven’t jumped on the social media bandwagon. If you’re finally breaking down and joining the world’s most popular social media network, or are just looking for more information about the site you use regularly, welcome! We’re here to help you make the transition. Joining Facebook is simple and free — and a great way to keep in touch with friends and family, meet new people, and express yourself.

Our Facebook guide is by no means all encompassing of the platform, but the following are some of the basics for any novice social networker. Just remember to keep those privacy settings in check!

Signing up

First, you’ll need to go to the official Facebook website and sign up for an account. The site will ask you for your first and last name, and either your mobile number or email address (either will do). You’ll also need to enter your birthday and gender, which will help assist others in finding you on the site. Make sure you also choose a password that’s easy to remember, and, moreover, strong enough to keep others guessing.

A word on using your real name, though: While Facebook has relaxed its requirement on using something other than your real name in some case, in general, the site will force you to use your real name in your profile. Those who don’t run the risk of having their accounts locked until they prove their identity. It’s a process, to be sure, so we suggest you use your real name from the get-go.

Sony Xperia XZ3 hands-on: Keeping up with the times

If you can’t keep up with Sony’s releases, you’re not alone. The Japanese manufacturer is known for the rapid cadence at which it launches new smartphone iterations, and we’ve come to expect a (slightly) revamped Xperia model at every major mobile trade show. IFA 2018 is no exception.

Read: Sony Xperia XZ3 announced: Same design but with an OLED display and Android Pie

The Xperia XZ3 is here to show that Sony can keep up with industry trends, naysayers be damned. The new phone comes with an OLED display, some spiffy edges, and, for good measure, a dose of AI. Here’s what you need to know about the Xperia XZ3.

The Sony Xperia XZ3 features a 6-inch Quad HD display. For the first time, Sony is joining virtually every other major OEM in using an OLED panel. It’s an 18:9 screen, which makes the XZ3 feel much more compact and easier to handle than the Xperia XZ2 Premium.

Sony has worked to reduce the size of the Xperia XZ3’s bezels. Don’t expect anything crazy, but the phone is a clear improvement over some of Sony’s other recent designs. The top and bottom bezels are still chunky, but the curved lateral edges are very thin. Overall, the Xperia XZ3 looks a lot like the Google Pixel 2 XL. There’s no notch – that’s one trend that Sony bucked, and we’re happy about it.

Turning to the back of the phone, the Xperia XZ3 comes with the same shiny glass design as the XZ2. The Gorilla Glass 5 (front and back) is a total fingerprint magnet, but when it’s clean, it looks stunning. We really liked the wine-like purple version, which is extremely stylish. The other color options are black, white, and a luscious sea green.

One thing we didn’t enjoy was the slightly odd placement of the Xperia XZ3’s fingerprint sensor and camera. They are positioned lower on the back of the phone compared to most phones out there. You’ll probably need a little time to get used to it.

As you’d expect from an OLED screen with Bravia influences, the Xperia XZ3’s screen features inky blacks and beautiful, vibrant colors. We didn’t spend a ton of time with it, but Sony’s first foray into OLED looks promising. Also, staples like Triluminos and X-Reality have made the jump from LCD to OLED.

The Sony Xperia XZ3 is powered by the Snapdragon 845, in line with the best Android devices out there. Where the phone falls a little short is in the RAM department. 4GB of RAM may be enough for day-to-day use for most customers, but we still would’ve liked to see 6GB on the spec sheet. Phones that sell for under $300 now offer 6GB of RAM, so there’s little justification for Sony to stick to 4GB. It’s the same story with the storage space: 64GB feels mid-range these days.

Read: Sony Xperia XZ3 specs: More of the same, but is that bad?

Sony is the premier camera sensors manufacturer, but ironically, its smartphones are not really known as the best camera phones in the industry. Still, you can always expect a solid camera from Sony, and that’s the case with the Xperia XZ3 as well. Sony has gone back to a single camera, but kept the same 19MP sensor it used on the Xperia XZ2 Premium. The lens is a little faster though, potentially allowing for some better results in low light.

The Sony Xperia XZ3 runs Android Pie! It’s actually the first phone to launch with the new Android version on board, confirming Sony’s reputation of actually caring about software updates. You can expect many of the AI-powered features that Google baked into stock Android, including improved battery management and predictive actions.

Sony’s own take on predicting which apps you’ll want to use involves a new feature called Side Sense – you can double tap the edges of the screen to bring out a mini app drawer containing the apps you’re most likely to need. In our experience, the feature doesn’t always work from the first try, possibly because it requires you to tap the curved edge of the screen, rather than the side of the phone. It works a bit like HTC’s Edge Sense, a feature that is ironically missing from the phone that HTC announced at IFA 2018, the U12 Life.

As usual, Sony loaded up the Xperia XZ3 with tons of other little features, including 3D Creator, a customizable vibration engine that works in concert with your media, and the ability to quickly launch the camera when holding up the device in landscape mode.

To wrap up, the Xperia XZ3 brings welcome changes to Sony’s ever-evolving lineage of high-end smartphones. The move to OLED was long overdue, and we’re glad to see Sony modernize its design. Android Pie out of the box is a strong selling point, as is the powerful camera. But the core specs are slightly behind the curve, and Sony has the terrible habit of not supporting its releases with proper marketing.

The Sony Xperia XZ3 will become available in the U.S. starting October 17, via Amazon and Best Buy. The price tag is a hefty $900, though Apple and Samsung have proven you can sell premium phones for much more than that.

Thoughts on the Xperia XZ3? Let us know in the comments.

CERN scientists have witnessed the decay of the Higgs boson particle

Six years after discovering the Higgs boson particle, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have witnessed it decaying into bottom quarks for the first time, demonstrating what is thought to be the most common way for Higgs bosons to decay. As the previously theoretical particle which confirms science’s best model of the universe, the announcement represents a significant milestone in our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics.

News concerning the decay of the Higgs boson to bottom quarks was revealed by ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) researchers at CERN, where the Large Hadron Collider is located. It represented the culmination of years of research, which confirm the prediction made by scientists.

Higgs bosons are created in just one out of every billion Large Hadron Collider collisions. They live for only the tiniest fraction of a second before their energy is converted into other particles. The results of this latest experiment was, in part, the result of artificial intelligence techniques — with deep learning neural networks used to help analyze the data produced.

“The observation of Higgs to bottom quark decays is an important milestone in our efforts to use the Higgs as a tool for discovery,” Paul Padley, a particle physicist at Rice University in Houston, who was involved with the research, told Digital Trends. “While the observation is consistent, within measurement error, with the Standard Model expectations there is plenty of room in the results for new physics to be taking place.”

The landmark event is significant due to the fact that it opens up ways for scientists to examine the behavior of the Higgs boson. For example, it could be used to explore whether it can interact with new undiscovered particles. However, Radley was keen to point out that this represents the beginning of a new phase of research, and certainly not the end.

“This observation is a leaping off point to explore the properties of the Higgs boson in detail in the hopes of throwing some light on the many mysteries that persist in our understanding of the universe,” Padley continued. “For example, some theories that have been created to explain dark matter also predict that the details of how the Higgs decays to bottom quarks will be slightly different to the Standard Model predictions. This is just an early, but important, step in a long journey of exploration.”

Editors’ Recommendations

• Thanks to CERN, your next X-ray scan could be in full color
• Astronomers finally confirm general relativity around a supermassive black hole
• Stanford A.I. can realistically score computer animations just by watching them
• Get your Sagan on with 60 awe-inspiring photos of the final frontier
• As sea levels rise, NASA’s new laser satellite will monitor polar ice decline