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Submission + - China's Quantum Radar Could Detect Stealth Planes and Missiles (popsci.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), China's foremost military electronics company, announced that its groundbreaking quantum radar has achieved capability of tracking high altitude objects, likely by increasing the coherence time entangled photons. CETC envisions that its quantum radar will be used in the stratosphere to track objects in "the upper atmosphere and beyond" (including space). Quantum can identify the position, radar cross section, speed, direction and even 'observe' on the composition of the target such as differentiating between an actual nuclear warhead against inflatable decoys.. Importantly, attempts to spoof the quantum radar would be easily noticed since any attempt to alter or duplicate the entangled photons would be detected by the radar. The news is an important illustration of a larger trend of Chinese advancement in the new, crucial area of quantum research. Other notable projects in China's quantum technology include the Micius satellite, and advances by Alibaba and the Chinese University of Science and Technology in a world record of entangling 18 photons (a quantum supercomputer would require about 50 entangled photons), such that China arguably leads the world in quantum technologies.

Comment Youtube casting fatally broken. No longer usable. (Score 4, Informative) 142

by DustinB (#50009621) Attached to: Chromecast Update Bringing Grief For Many Users

This update hosed casting Youtube from my Android phone. It constantly loses the queue. It constantly plays audio only with no video. If another user connects to YouTube the queue is lost. Users constantly booted from being connected. The currently playing box in the lower right disappears preventing any way of controlling the remote device you're casting to. There could not have been any testing prior to this release.
Privacy

Researchers Detect Android Apps That Connect to User Tracking and Ad Sites 74

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-track-me-bro dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A group of European researchers has developed software that tracks the URLs to which cellphone apps connect. After downloading 2,000+ free apps from Google Play, they indexed all the sites those apps connected to, and compared them to a list of known advertising and user tracking sites. "In total, the apps connect to a mind-boggling 250,000 different URLs across almost 2,000 top level domains. And while most attempt to connect to just a handful of ad and tracking sites, some are much more prolific. Vigneri and co give as an example "Music Volume Eq," an app designed to control volume, a task that does not require a connection to any external urls. And yet the app makes many connections. 'We find the app Music Volume EQ connects to almost 2,000 distinct URLs,' they say. [Another major offender] is an app called Eurosport Player which connects to 810 different user tracking sites." The researchers plan to publish their software for users to try out on Google Play soon.
Security

NBC News Confuses the World About Cyber-Security 144

Posted by samzenpus from the think-of-the-athletes dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "In a video report posted Feb. 4, NBC News reporter Richard Engel, with the help of a security analyst, two fresh laptops, a new cell phone, and a fake identity, pretended to go online with the technical naiveté of a Neanderthal housepet. (Engel's video blog is here.) Almost as soon as he turned on the phone in the Sochi airport, Engel reported hackers snooping around, testing the security of the machines. Engel's story didn't explain whether 'snooping around' meant someone was port-scanning his device in particular with the intention of cracking its security and prying out its secrets, no matter how much effort it took, or if the 'snooping' was other WiFi devices looking for access points and trying automatically to connect with those that were unprotected. Judging from the rest of his story, it was more likely the latter. Engel also reported hackers snooping around a honeypot set up by his security consultant which, as Gartner analyst Paul Proctor also pointed out in a blog posting, is like leaving the honey open and complaining when it attracts flies. When you try to communicate with anything, it also tries to communicate with you; that's how networked computers work: They communicate with each other. None of the 'hacks' or intrusions Engel created or sought out for himself have anything to do with Russia or Sochi, however; those 'hacks' he experienced could have happened in any Starbucks in the country, and does almost every day, Proctor wrote. That's why there is antivirus software for phones and laptops. It's why every expert, document, video, audio clip or even game that has anything at all to do with cybersecurity makes sure to mention you should never open attachments from spam email, or in email from people you don't know, and you should set up your browser to keep random web sites from downloading and installing anything they want on your computer. But keep up the fear-mongering."
Announcements

Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds! 2219

Posted by timothy from the there-would-be-this-picture-of-a-cat dept.
We've had only a few major redesigns since 1997; we think it's time for another. But we really do take to heart the comments you've made about the look and functionality of the beta site that houses Slashdot's future look. So let's all slow down. Right now, we're directing 25 percent of non-logged-in users to the beta; it's a significant number, but it's the best way for us to test drive this new design, to have you show us what pieces need to be fixed, and how. If you want to move back to Classic Slashdot, that path is available: from the Slashdot Beta page, you just need to select the "Slashdot Classic" link from the footer (or this link). We're committed to keep you informed of the plans as changes are implemented; we can't promise that every user will like every change, but we don't want anything to come as a surprise. Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready. We have work to do on four big areas: feature parity (especially for commenting); the overall UI, especially in terms of information density and headline scanning; plain old bugs; and, lastly, the need for a better framework for communicating about the How and the Why of this process. Some of you have suggested we're not listening; on the contrary, some of us are 'listening' pretty much full-time. We're keeping you informed of this process, because we're a community and we want to take everyone with us. But, yes, we're trying something new. Why? We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience. We want to give our current audience the space where they are comfortable. And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views of both comments and stories. It's not an either/or. It's going to be both. If we haven't communicated that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that. And in the meantime, we're not sorry to have received a flood of feedback, most of it specific, constructive and substantive. Please keep it coming. We will be adding more specific info here in the days to come.

Comment Re:Americans don't know how to care for animals (Score 1) 279

by DustinB (#46124593) Attached to: Animal Drug Investigation Reveals Pet Medication Often Doesn't Work

I think unfortunately most Americans are asied on bits and lumps of dried meat and canned foods. I'm American and our culture here is very much to toss in our mouths anything tasty. There is absolutely zero awareness that our bodies are both physically and chemically comprised of the nutrients we ingest. I try to inform others about this and am often looked upon as a health nut for just encouraging ingestion of real food. Nothing extreme, just actual food. We are raised on foods that solely come from packages, whether plastic or metal so the idea of real food perplexes many.

Comment Re:Use film to inspire scientific dreaming (Score 1) 171

by DustinB (#42484049) Attached to: NASA Considers Putting an Asteroid Into Orbit Around the Moon

I agree with everything you said... education is key. Growing up in a small football town with terrible education my parents were early internet adopters and gave me full access to it. It utterly opened my eyes to a bigger more amazing world beyond small-town football and religion. I hope to see amazing changes with information access and specifically web-based schooling to provide quality education independent of geography, local funding, etc.

Comment Use film to inspire scientific dreaming (Score 5, Interesting) 171

by DustinB (#42481721) Attached to: NASA Considers Putting an Asteroid Into Orbit Around the Moon

It would be spectacular if movies were made based upon potential Nasa missions and the awesome adventures that would entail. Perhaps that would get through to the masses. Unfortunately these thins are so mind-boggling to our uneducated masses that they don't see the amazing technical feat and engineering this requires, nor the art and wonder of it all. It's beyond their culture of lulz, shopping, and life stress. We love our movies though and they can still help us remember how to dream. I'd love to see a resurgence of sci-fi with an aim at inspiring us to push forward.

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