Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - 5 Year Mission Continues After 45 Year Hiatus (hackaday.com)

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: Hackaday brings us news about a continuation of the original Star Trek series. The Kickstarter-funded project is attempting to complete the original 5 year mission, which ended after only three seasons on the air. The fan based and fan supported reincarnation is cleverly titled “Star Trek Continues” and has CBS’s consent.

Check out the first episode "Pilgrim of Eternity". For being fan-made, it's actually pretty good.

Submission + - US Nuclear Plants Rely on By-product of China, Russia's Nuclear Weapons (theepochtimes.com)

Submitted by jjp9999
jjp9999 writes: Close to 13 percent of energy in the U.S. is being produced by nuclear power plants that rely on Lithium-7, which is needed to cool the reactors. Yet, the supply of Lithium-7 may soon be cut. Lithium-7 is a by-product of Lithium-6, which is used in nuclear weapons programs, and the only suppliers of Lithium-7 are China and Russia since the United States halted production in 1963. A report from the Government Accountability Office states that brokers of Lithium-7 told researchers that both China and Russia recently told them they were either having trouble obtaining it, or there were no supplies to sell. A post on Rep. Dan Maffei's (D-NY) website reads, 'Whether this was a temporary disruption or a pattern of future supply shortages is still unclear, but the potential of future Lithium-7 supply problems is apparent.'

Submission + - Apple may no longer support older OS X versions (zdnet.com)

Submitted by lseltzer
lseltzer writes: Has Apple changed their policy on security updates for versions of OS X older than the current one? Apple has released Mavericks and disclosed the 50+ vulnerabilities fixed in it, but they have not released an update for Mountain Lion. Therefore, Mountain Lion users have 50+ unpatched vulnerabilities. The company has no policy on product lifecycle, but they have always released security updates for at least the prior version of OS X. The new approach indicates that they want to make the OS X lifecycle like the iOS one: There is only one current versions and if you want any support you will upgrade to it.

Submission + - First Experimental Evidence That Time Is An Emergent Quantum Phenomenon (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: One of the great challenges in physics is to unite the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity. But all attempts to do this all run into the famous 'problem of time'--the resulting equations describe a static universe in which nothing ever happens. In 1983, theoreticians showed how this could be solved if time is an emergent phenomenon based on entanglement, the phenomenon in which two quantum particles share the same existence. An external, god-like observer always sees no difference between these particles compared to an external objective clock. But an observer who measures one of the pair--and so becomes entangled with it--can immediately see how it evolves differently from its partner. So from the outside the universe appears static and unchanging, while objects that are entangled within it experience the maelstrom of change. Now quantum physicists have performed the first experimental test of this idea by measuring the evolution of a pair of entangled photons in two different ways. An external god-like observer sees no difference while an observer who measures one particle and becomes entangled with it does see the change. In other words, the experiment shows how time is an emergent phenomenon based on entanglement, in which case the contradiction between quantum mechanics and general relativity seems to melt away.

Submission + - Court Rules Probable-Cause Warrant Required for GPS Trackers (wired.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: An appellate court has finally supplied an answer to an open question left dangling by the Supreme Court in 2012: Do law enforcement agencies need a probable-cause warrant to affix a GPS tracker to a target’s vehicle? The justices said the government’s statement “wags the dog rather vigorously,” noting that the primary reason for a search cannot be to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes. They also noted that “Generally speaking, a warrantless search is not rendered reasonable merely because probable cause existed that would have justified the issuance of a warrant.” The justices also rejected the government’s argument that obtaining a warrant would impede the ability of law enforcement to investigate crimes.

Submission + - Cyberattacks Hide Chinese Spies Inside US Companies (theepochtimes.com)

Submitted by BioTitan
BioTitan writes: The advanced cyberattacks coming out of China may also be covering the tracks of insider spies. If an insider steals information from a network, hackers will launch a cyberattack against the same network to make it look like it was stolen by the cyberattack and prevent an investigation that could catch the spy. Jarrett Kolthoff, president of SpearTip and a former special agent in U.S. Army counterintelligence, told Epoch Times the technique is standard operation in Chinese espionage. He said they’ll 'use other means as a ruse to make it show that the information was collected through maybe zero-day malware, or through some other means or methodology, so that the bad insider is never identified and that insider can continue to collect.' Gang Liu, a former vice president at Morgan Stanley and a former leader of China’s Tienanmen Square student movement, explained it simply. He said the thinking in Chinese espionage is if you want to steal something, 'just put someone else’s fingerprints on it, and they’ll chase someone else.'

Submission + - Can Conscious Intention Affect Quantum Events? (theepochtimes.com)

Submitted by jjp9999
jjp9999 writes: The role of consciousness in quantum measurement has been debated since the early days of quantum mechanics, but few experiments have been done that actively test the role of conscious intent in the process. Dean Radin and colleagues performed a series of experiments that tested whether attempts to mentally influence a quantum measurement would make a difference in the interference pattern in a double-slit apparatus. Participants were indeed able to do so—the effects are highly statistically significant, demonstrating that conscious intent can influence interference patterns, and thus quantum events. Furthermore, participants with meditation experience were particularly good at creating the effect, while those without meditation experience did not influence the measurements, on average.

Submission + - Chinese Telecom Leverages Firefox for Image of Privacy (theepochtimes.com)

Submitted by BioTitan
BioTitan writes: The U.S. House Intelligence Committee warned last year that doing business with Chinese telecoms ZTE and Huawei can threaten a company and its users—both in terms of privacy and intellectual property. The concern was that both companies have internal committees run by the Chinese government, and neither would explain the function of those committees. Yet, with the new ZTE Open Firefox OS phone, ZTE has dodged criticism through the established credibility of Firefox. A Mozilla spokesperson told Epoch Times they are aware of the warnings, saying "We will continue to keep the cautions articulated by the Committee in mind when we evaluate all of our mobile ecosystem partners. If we learn of specific information that would impact Firefox OS we will respond accordingly."

Comment Re:Ouch! (Score 1) 330

by BioTitan (#44187815) Attached to: EU To Vote On Suspension of Data Sharing With US
This is true. Basically all countries in the world run some level of monitoring through their consulates and embassies—this includes US allies spying on the US. Few have the ability to tap everything, but they all do it. For them, it's just basic intelligence gathering. http://news.yahoo.com/obama-suggests-spying-nations-allies-common-210845024.html [AP via Yahoo]

Slashdot Top Deals

We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan

Close