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Submission + - Russia and China crack encrypted Snowden files. Britain responds

Submitted by garyisabusyguy
garyisabusyguy writes: According to Sunday Times:
RUSSIA and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.u...

And this non-paywalled Reuters version:
http://www.reuters.com/article...

MI6 has decided that it is too dangerous to operate in Russia or China. This removes intelligence capabilities that have existed throughout the Cold War, and which may have helped to prevent a 'hot' nuclear war.

Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?

Submission + - Amazon publishes opaque transparency report (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: Post-Snowden there is great interest in just what involvement the government has with technology firms. There are frequent requests from government agencies for information about users and the likes of Google, Snapchat and even the NSA itself have all release transparency reports that reveal, in broad strokes, the number of requests for data they have received.

Amazon is the latest company to release a transparency report — although the term really should be used in the loosest possible sense. The report includes scant details about the number of subpoenas, search warrants, court orders, and national security requests received in the first five months of 2015. The report is so vague as to be virtually meaningless.

Submission + - Past a certain critical temperature, the Universe will be destroyed

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: If you take all the kinetic motion out of a system, and have all the particles that make it up perfectly at rest, somehow even overcoming intrinsic quantum effects, you’d reach absolute zero, the theoretically lowest temperature of all. But what about the other direction? Is there a limit to how hot something can theoretically get? You might think not, that while things like molecules, atoms, protons and even matter will break down at high enough temperatures, you can always push your system hotter and hotter. But it turns out that the Universe limits what’s actually possible, as any physical system will self-destruct beyond a certain point.

Submission + - Brain imaging shows abnormal white matter areas in the brains of stutterers

Submitted by n01
n01 writes: Headline: "Brain imaging shows abnormal white matter areas in the brains of stutterers"
Stuttering — a speech disorder in which sounds, syllables or words are repeated or prolonged — affects more than 70 million people, or about 1% of the population, worldwide. Once treated as a psychological or emotional condition, stuttering can now be traced to brain neuroanatomy and physiology. Two new studies from UC Santa Barbara researchers provide new insight into the treatment of the speech disorder as well as understanding its physiological basis. The first paper, published in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, finds that the MPI stuttering treatment program, a new treatment developed at UCSB, was twice as effective as the standard best practices protocol. The second study, which appears in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, uses diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) in an MRI scanner to identify abnormal areas of white matter in the brains of adult stutterers. According to co-author Janis Ingham, a professor emerita of speech and hearing sciences at UCSB and co-author of both papers, the two studies taken together demonstrate two critical points: A neuroanatomic abnormality exists in the brains of people who stutter, yet they can learn to speak fluently in spite of it.

Submission + - More wearables to be replaced by contact less sensing 2

Submitted by n01
n01 writes: Last week's story reported on some MIT research for measuring breathing and heart rate from a distance. While that approach required custom built radar hardware, there's now a software-only solution for smartphones that uses sonar instead of radar. The iPhone app (a sleep cycle alarm clock) is not sensitive enough to detect breathing or even heartbeat, but it works remarkably well to detect when the user is moving in its vicinity, the advantage being that it works with the iPhone's built-in audio hardware. The app continuously analyzes non-linear changes in the acoustic room-transfer-function (sampled at ultrasonic frequencies) to detect motion. The user's motion during the night is detected acoustically (instead of mechanically, like the previously existing apps or wearables), so there is no need to wear a device or to place the iPhone inside the bed, it all works from your bedside table.

Submission + - iPhone App Includes Ultrasonic Motion Sensor 6

Submitted by flovdu
flovdu writes: A recently published sleep cycle alarm clock app for the iPhone continuously analyzes non-linear changes in the acoustic room-transfer-function (sampled at ultrasonic frequencies) to detect motion within the vicinity of the smart phone. Because this app detects the user's motion during the night acoustically (instead of mechanically, like the previously existing apps), there is no need to place the iPhone inside the bed, rather it can remain on the bedside table. (Alternate Video Link)

Comment Is anybody else heavily reminded of Scala? (Score 1) 636

by n01 (#47170409) Attached to: Apple Announces New Programming Language Called Swift
I didn't have much time to look at the language guide, but in the short time I already discovered many things that exist in Scala, and even the syntax is very similar:
* Tuples
* Closures
* Swift seems to be a functional programming language, even more than Objective-C (the 'functions'/closures there are called blocks).
* For comprehensions
* var/val is named var/let here

Comment Question to experts in quantum physics (Score 1) 108

by n01 (#46308179) Attached to: Making Sure Our Lab Equipment Isn't Tricking Us
Does the following make any sense?

My thinking was that if two far-away detectors measure an entangled pair of photons (e.g.), each detector will measure both possible results (e.g. up *and* down). Each detector and thereby their environment becomes entangled with that photon. So each detector and it's environment starts a new branch in their respective many-worlds reality. (One side of the branch for “up” and one branch for “down”).

When you later compare the measurements of the detectors, you will find the measurements pair up (for example they are opposite). In the classical interpretation this could be thought of as a “spooky action at a distance” (instantaneous synchronization). But in the many-worlds interpretation only the worlds where the two separate measurements pair up would survive (the worlds where there is no match would cease to exist, as you put it). This would require no instantaneous synchronization, but would appear as such at the moment when the station that is comparing the measurements is becoming entangled with both detectors, e.g. by receiving the measurement outcome information from both detectors. The four “realities” (e.g up-up, up-down, down-up, down-down) meeting at that moment would be reduced to two “realities”, by merging pairs of “compatible realities” (only up-down and down-up “survive”).

INAQP (I’m not a quantum physicist) so I hope all of this makes sense. And I guess I haven’t added much to the parent’s point except adding a (hopefully valid) example.

If any expert reads this, I would love to know where I can read more about these ideas. There would certainly be a term for this already.

I only wonder why this possibility isn’t discussed more often, I seems such an easy way out of the paradox.

Comment Apple allows other browsers now (Score 1) 251

by n01 (#42209445) Attached to: Android Options Mean "Best" Browsers Might Surprise You
The times when Apple would reject any other browser are over. There's Chrome avaible here: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/chrome/id535886823?mt=8 I even managed to get my own browser on the app store https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/resworb/id520270702?mt=8. I'm still waiting to win a most-useless-app-award with that one though.

Comment Try Kosmos Verlag from Germany (Score 1) 118

by n01 (#40277725) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Advice On Child-Friendly Microscopes?
I got one as a child. Seems they have a few new models now. I'm not sure if they ship to the US. http://www.kosmos.de/kosmos/wrs/wrs.nsf?openDatabase&_id=4002051636029&_lang=DE http://www.kosmos.de/kosmos/wrs/wrs.nsf?openDatabase&_id=4002051635213&_lang=DE http://www.kosmos.de/kosmos/wrs/wrs.nsf?openDatabase&_id=4002051635718&_lang=DE
Apple

Submission + - Smartphones given new capabilities by novel use of sensors

Submitted by n01
n01 writes: The advent of mass-produced highly capable smart phones and tablet computers has started to transform economies world wide. Many tools that previously required specialized hardware can now be virtualized by software running on such a device. Through clever programming, the available sensors can be put to novel use that most probably wasn't foreseen in the original design process of the computing device. Take, for example, the app Acoustic Ruler that uses the propagation of sound waves to measure distances of up to 25 meters. Or take an app such as Cardiograph that equips your smart phone to measure your heart rate. While one app uses the audio playback and recording capabilities of the iPhone to measure distances, the other uses the smart phone's camera to sense your heart beat by the variation of light that passes through your finger. What once required the physical production and delivery of a traditional cardiograph or yardstick can now be reproduced and distributed digitally.

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