PolygamousRanchKid brings this news from CNN: Physics centers essentially on four forces that control our known, visible universe, governing everything from the production of heat in the sun to the way your laptop works. They are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong force. New research may be leading us closer to one more. Scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Atomki) have posted findings showing what could be an example of that fifth force at work. The scientists were closely watching how an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed. The particles split at an unusual angle -- 115 degrees -- which couldn't be explained by known physics. The study's lead scientist, Attila Krasznahorkay, told CNN that this was the second time his team had detected a new particle, which they call X17, because they calculated its mass at 17 megaelectronvolts. "X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email. Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Irvine told CNN he's been following the Hungarian team's work for years, and believes its research is shaping up to be a game changer. If these results can be replicated, "this would be a no-brainer Nobel Prize," he said... They're leading us closer to what's considered the Holy Grail in physics, which Albert Einstein had pursued but never achieved. Physicists hope to create a "unified field theory," which would coherently explain all cosmic forces from the formation of galaxies down to the quirks of quarks.

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peterthegreat321 shares this story from Medium's new tech site, OneZero about Second Sight's experimental brain implant that offers a kind of artificial vision: From the outside, the Orion looks like a pair of sunglasses with a small camera and video processing unit attached to it. Implanted in the brain, however, is a postage stamp-sized chip containing 60 electrodes that sits on the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. When the device is switched on, the camera captures a person's surroundings, and the wireless video processing unit converts those images into electrical pulses using an algorithm. Those pulses are transmitted to the electrodes on the brain, which interprets them as visual clues... [T]he Orion, which shares much of its technology with the Argus II, bypasses the eye and optic nerve completely. "With the current system we're testing, you don't even need to have eyes for the device to work," says Dr. Nader Pouratian, the neurosurgeon at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center who implanted Jason Esterhuizen's device. As the primary investigator of the trial at UCLA, he has outfitted four patients with the device. The other two study participants received the implant from Dr. Daniel Yoshor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas... Esterhuizen and the other participants have regained a limited amount of vision after being completely blind for years or decades. While they don't see color, shapes, or clear edges and can't yet read text, they are able to distinguish light from dark, they can recognize moving objects, and they have some degree of depth perception. People and objects appear as dots of light corresponding to where they're located, and as they get closer, more dots appear. "It's like learning a new language," Esterhuizen says. "You learn how to interpret what's going on...." Electrodes in the brain also cause scar tissue to form over time, making them stop working, so it isn't clear how long these implants will last. Jessy Dorn, vice president of clinical and scientific affairs at Second Sight, says the electrodes used in the Orion device should work for at least five years. That means patients will probably eventually lose what little vision they acquire with the devices. Another major limitation of the Orion is that it's only useful for those who were born sighted and later lost their vision. In people who are born blind, the parts of the brain that are responsible for sight are not fully developed, and visual information cannot be effectively transmitted to the brain. A device that could help all people with blindness is still a long way off... Esterhuizen though is hopeful about the future of assistive technologies for the blind and visually impaired. "It's just baby steps for now," he says. "But eventually I think this technology will change the lives of millions of people."

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France has among the highest rates of domestic violence in Europe, in part due to poor police response to abuse reports.

France has among the highest rates of domestic violence in Europe, in part due to poor police response to abuse reports.

An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider: Slack tweeted a video on Thursday comparing a Slack ad and a Microsoft ad, showing the similarities between them and implying the Microsoft ad copied Slack's concept. The video was captioned "ok boomer," a phrase that has turned into a meme for millennials and Gen Z to voice their gripes with the baby boomer generation... Slack is leaning into its status as the young, hip startup by calling out its older, more established competition: Microsoft... On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that Teams hit 20 million daily users, while Slack most recently announced just 12 million users. Slack's stock took a dive after the announcement. Although it has fewer users, Slack points to its user engagement, saying that users enjoy using the app. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said that Microsoft sees the company as an "existential threat." The Verge notes that "a lot of businesses will opt for Teams simply because it's bundled as part of Office 365." And ZDNet reports that a partner at one of Slack's early investors even tweeted an image showing Google Trends' top five rising queries for Microsoft Teams. #1 is "how to stop Microsoft teams," and also include "how to turn off Microsoft teams," "how to get rid of Microsoft teams", and "Microsoft teams keeps reinstalling."

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Nearly 330 killed since October 1, a toll that could have been higher were it not for the volunteers offering first aid.

This week America's National Transportation Safety Board presented its findings on the fatal 2018 crash of a Uber test robocar with a pedestrian in Arizona. Forbes reports: The NTSB's final determination of probable cause put primary blame on the safety driver's inattention. Contributory causes were Uber's lack of safety culture, poor monitoring of safety drivers, and lack of countermeasures for automation complacency. They put tertiary blame on the pedestrian's impaired crossing of the road, and the lack of good regulations at the Arizona and Federal levels... When it comes to human fault, the report noted that [pedestrian] Herzberg had a "high concentration of methamphetamine" (more than 10 times the medicinal dose) in her blood which would alter her perception. She also had some marijuana residue. She did not look to her right at the oncoming vehicle until 1 second before the crash. There was also confirmation that the safety driver had indeed pulled out a cell phone and was streaming a TV show on it, looking down at it 34% of the time during her driving session, with a full 5 second "glance" from 6 to 1 seconds prior to the impact. While Uber recorded videos of safety drivers, they never reviewed those of this driver to learn that she was violating the policy against cell phone use. She had received no reprimands, and driven this stretch of road 73 times before... Had the vehicle operator been attentive, she would likely have had sufficient time to detect and react to the crossing pedestrian to avoid the crash or mitigate the impact. The vehicle operator's prolonged visual distraction, a typical effect of automation complacency, led to her failure to detect the pedestrian in time to avoid the collision. The Uber Advanced Technologies Group did not adequately recognize the risk of automation complacency and develop effective countermeasures to control the risk of vehicle operator disengagement, which contributed to the crash... The detrimental effect of the company's ineffective oversight was exacerbated by its decision to remove the second vehicle operator during testing of the automated driving system... Most notably, they do not attribute the technology failures as causes of the crash. This is a correct cause ruling -- all tested vehicles, while generally better than Uber's, have flaws which would lead to a crash with a negligent safety driver, and to blame those flaws would be to blame the idea of testing this way at all. Forbes also notes the report criticizes Arizona's "shortcomings" in safeguarding the public because of the state's lack of a safety-focused application-approval process for automated driving system testing. The article adds that today Uber "is only doing very limited testing -- just a one mile loop around their HQ limited to 25 miles per hour."

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"Researchers have discovered a new multi-platform backdoor that infects Windows and Linux systems allowing the attackers to run malicious code and binaries on the compromised machines," reports Bleeping Computer: The malware dubbed ACBackdoor is developed by a threat group with experience in developing malicious tools for the Linux platform based on the higher complexity of the Linux variant as Intezer security researcher Ignacio Sanmillan found. "ACBackdoor provides arbitrary execution of shell commands, arbitrary binary execution, persistence, and update capabilities," the Intezer researcher found. Both variants share the same command and control (C2) server but the infection vectors they use to infect their victims are different: the Windows version is being pushed through malvertising with the help of the Fallout Exploit Kit while the Linux payload is dropped via a yet unknown delivery system... Besides infecting victims via an unknown vector, the Linux malicious binary is detected by only one of the anti-malware scanning engines on VirusTotal at the time this article was published, while the Windows one is detected by 37 out of 70 engines. The Linux binary is also more complex and has extra malicious capabilities, although it shares a similar control flow and logic with the Windows version... ACBackdoor can receive the info, run, execute, and update commands from the C2 server, allowing its operators to run shell commands, to execute a binary, and to update the malware on the infected system. The article warns that the Linux version will disguise itself as the Ubuntu UpdateNotifier utility, renaming its process as the Linux kernel thread [kworker/u8:7-ev].

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Shaq O'Neal was one of the greatest players in basketball history. But as a spokesperson for Amazon's Ring security cameras, the EFF also calls him the "one man at Ring who might listen to reason," challenging him to go one-on-one with the EFF's privacy experts: In just a year and a half, Amazon's Ring has set up more than 500 partnerships with law enforcement agencies to convince communities to spy on themselves through doorbell cameras and its social app, Neighbors. The company is moving recklessly fast with little regard for the long-term risks of this mass surveillance technology. These partnerships threaten free speech and the well-being of communities, vastly expand police surveillance, undermine trust between police and residents, and enable racial profiling by exacerbating suspicion and paranoia. So far, Amazon has not committed to making any changes. But we think one person at Ring might listen: basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq has been a spokesperson and co-owner of Ring since 2016, and has been nearly as much a public face of the company as its CEO, Jamie Siminoff. EFF would like to sit down with Shaq to discuss how Ring's partnerships with police can actually end up harming the communities that the company hopes to keep safe. If we wanted to learn how to dunk, we would go to Shaq. Before he promotes the sale of cameras that surveil neighborhoods indiscriminately, Shaq should come to the experts. Shaq, sit down with us and learn how these partnerships turn our neighborhoods into vast, unaccountable surveillance networks.

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US vice president's visit comes as anti-government protests in Baghdad and across Iraq's mainly Shia south escalate.

Former Minister of Fisheries Bernhard Esau arrested following corruption and money-laundering allegations.

American Oversight says documents provide 'a clear paper trail' of contacts between Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pompeo.

Earlier this week Forbes reported on two Chilean astronomers "expecting to see images of distant stars and galaxies. Instead, they saw a train of SpaceX satellites crossing the night sky, a worrying sign of what might be to come for astronomy." Now Digital Trends decries SpaceX's "proposed launch of tens of thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit where they will form a mega-constellation, making much of our present astronomical efforts impossible." Earlier this month, SpaceX launched another 60 of its Starlink satellites as part of its plan to provide high-speed internet to every part of the planet. However, as useful as this may sound, an astronomer who spoke to Digital Trends said that there are plenty of potential negative ramifications. "Even as professional astronomers, we've only just woken up to the fact that [this had the potential to be] a serious problem in the near future," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell has long been an enthusiastic proponent of satellite launches. Since 1989, he has written and edited Jonathan's Space Report, a free internet newsletter which documents technical details of satellite launches. "I'm a little sad to be on the other side of the coin, but I think it's an important issue that needs to be talked about," he said. McDowell's fear -- shared by others in his field -- is that the sheer number of satellite launches set to take place in the coming years will make it virtually impossible to carry out particular types of ground-based astronomy. Already astrophysicists carrying out long exposures, lasting around 15 seconds, frequently have their images ruined by a satellite trail passing overhead. Many times brighter than the "super faint galaxy" an astronomer might be looking for, this essentially ruins the image. "That's an annoyance, but you work around it," McDowell said. "You take multiple images , trusting that at least one of them will not have the trail. But when we get to the point where there are tens of thousands of very bright satellites in low orbit, the worry is that almost every image you take will have these trails on it... At some point certain types of astronomical observation will just not be feasible any more...." With Starlink as currently envisaged, when it's fully deployed there will be more naked eye-visible satellites in the sky than there are stars," McDowell continued.... "The sky will be seething instead of static. That is a [major] change to our environment."

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Plain-clothed police arrest Mada Masr editor Shady Zalat from his Cairo home in the early hours of Saturday.

The results pave the way for Sidama to become a 10th state of the African country.