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Comment targeted growth-oriented investments yadda yada (Score 2) 7

"Targeted growth-oriented investments aligned with the 6 strategic areas of focus," eh?

How will this help them leverage their core competencies in order to holistically administrate exceptional synergy? Will they still be able to distill their identify through client-centric solutions? And proactively oversee day-to-day operations, services and deliverables with cross-platform innovation?

Just wondering.

Comment I read tons, just not on paper. (Score 2) 73

I don't even know where I could even get a hardcopy version of Moses T. Runnels' two-volume History of Sanbornton, New Hampshire, totaling around 1,700 pages or so and published in 1882. But I frequently consult the PDF version I downloaded from one of the numerous web sites that has it available. Then there's my OverDrive Libby account, which gives me access to the holdings of something like eight library networks covering virtually all of a state, plus a university library or two. I voraciously consume news from a variety of sources, including through aggregators like Slashdot and Fark. Plus various academic journals related to my work and other interests, through one of the aforementioned university libraries.

In short, if I'm not asleep or driving, I'm likely reading something. I just use a lot less shelf space and forests than I used to.

Science

Scientists Found a Way To Cool Quantum Computers Using Noise (sciencedaily.com) 7

Slashdot reader alternative_right writes: Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum refrigerator that actually uses noise to drive cooling instead of fighting it. By carefully steering heat at unimaginably small scales, the device can act as a refrigerator, heat engine, or energy amplifier inside quantum circuits.

Submission + - Young Journalists Drone, Expose Russian Ships Off Dutch-German Coasts (digitaldigging.org)

schwit1 writes: Seven German journalism students, as a continuation of their OSINT course project, tracked the movements of ships with Russian crews off the coasts of the Netherlands and Germany and linked them to swarms of drones appearing over European military airfields and other strategic sites.

The guys not only analyzed thousands of data points, but also used leaked documents, established connections with sources in European agencies, and drove 2,500 km across three countries chasing one of the ships – even launching their own drone to fly over it.

At the end of the article, there’s precise data on the vessels, so you can follow them yourself.

Submission + - Japan renders current conventional submarines obsolete (x.com)

schwit1 writes: With the Taigei class and its lithium-ion batteries, Tokyo already set a new benchmark: up to three weeks submerged without ever raising a snorkel. That, however, was merely the opening act.

Today, Toyota and Panasonic are leading the global race in solid-state batteries, with prototypes arriving in 2027–2028, mass production after 2030, and Japan’s next submarine class will be the first to use them, either in pure battery form or as a hybrid with a small reactor for onboard recharging. This hybrid would be similar to what the Chinese are developing.

The leap is staggering. A 4,000 ton conventional submarine will patrol for 40 to 60 days without surfacing, sprint well above 20 knots for hours on end, and do it all more quietly than many nuclear subs, thanks to being significantly lighter and running solely on battery power.

Solid-state cells weigh roughly one-third as much, generate 40% less heat, and eliminate half the cooling systems. The result is a faster, stealthier hull that can travel thousands of kilometers without ever breaking the surface.

Those hundreds of saved tons translate directly into more powerful electric motors, extra torpedoes and missiles, cutting-edge sensors, or greater crew comfort. The same hull now carries twice the energy or twice the weapons.

It appears there are also plans to equip the system with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ micro nuclear reactor. Its design has no moving parts, which gives it excellent quietness. It’s essentially like a battery that can run for 20 years.

Comment I'm an astronomer who studied supernovae ... (Score 4, Interesting) 30

... and can say that the question, "how does the luminosity of type Ia supernovae depend on redshift?" is a very, very complex one. The number of factors which come into play is large (metallicity, age of the binary system, extinction in the local environment, extinction in the intergalactic environment, corrections for photometric calibration as a function of redshift, etc.), and it's easy to fall into the trap of finding one correlation that seems to explain everything.

I'll add that it's particularly easy, in my opinion, for theorists to fall into this trap.

Submission + - Iran's Capital Is Moving. The Reason Is an Ecological Catastrophe (scientificamerican.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country’s president has said. The situation in Tehran is the result of "a perfect storm of climate change and corruption,” says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “We no longer have a choice,” said Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during a speech on Thursday. Instead Iranian officials are considering moving the capital to the country’s southern coast. But experts say the proposal does not change the reality for the nearly 10 million people who live in Tehran and are now suffering the consequences of a decades-long decline in water supply.
Privacy

Manufacturer Remotely Bricks Smart Vacuum After Its Owner Blocked It From Collecting Data (tomshardware.com) 123

"An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device," writes Tom's Hardware.

"That's when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to." The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after... He sent it to the service center multiple times, wherein the technicians would turn it on and see nothing wrong with the vacuum. When they returned it to him, it would work for a few days and then fail to boot again... [H]e decided to disassemble the thing to determine what killed it and to see if he could get it working again...

[He discovered] a GD32F103 microcontroller to manage its plethora of sensors, including Lidar, gyroscopes, and encoders. He created PCB connectors and wrote Python scripts to control them with a computer, presumably to test each piece individually and identify what went wrong. From there, he built a Raspberry Pi joystick to manually drive the vacuum, proving that there was nothing wrong with the hardware. From this, he looked at its software and operating system, and that's where he discovered the dark truth: his smart vacuum was a security nightmare and a black hole for his personal data.

First of all, it's Android Debug Bridge, which gives him full root access to the vacuum, wasn't protected by any kind of password or encryption. The manufacturer added a makeshift security protocol by omitting a crucial file, which caused it to disconnect soon after booting, but Harishankar easily bypassed it. He then discovered that it used Google Cartographer to build a live 3D map of his home. This isn't unusual, by far. After all, it's a smart vacuum, and it needs that data to navigate around his home. However, the concerning thing is that it was sending off all this data to the manufacturer's server. It makes sense for the device to send this data to the manufacturer, as its onboard SoC is nowhere near powerful enough to process all that data. However, it seems that iLife did not clear this with its customers.

Furthermore, the engineer made one disturbing discovery — deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader registrations_suck for sharing the article.

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