Rice University physicist Qimiao Si began mapping quantum criticality more than a decade ago, and he’s finally found a traveler that can traverse the final frontier. …
Tag: frontier
New frontier for science as astronomers detect gas molecules in comet from another star
An international team of astronomers, including Queen’s University Belfast researchers, have made a historic discovery, detecting gas molecules in a comet which has tumbled into our solar system from another star. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-09-frontier-science-astronomers-gas-molecules.html…
Alabama Tracking Students’ Locations To Penalize Them For Leaving Games Early
The University of Alabama is taking an extraordinary, Orwellian step to reward students who attend games — and stay until the fourth quarter — by using location-tracking technology from students’ phones to see who skips out and who stays. If students stay until the fourth quarter, they will be rewarded with improved access to tickets to the SEC championship game and…
Phone Companies, State Attorneys General Announce Broad Campaign To Fight Robocalls
Twelve of the country’s largest telephone companies on Thursday pledged to implement new technology to spot and block robocalls, part of an agreement brokered between the industry and 51 attorneys general to combat the growing telecom scourge. From a report: The new effort to be announced in Washington commits a wide array of companies in the absence of regulation to improving…
Dreams of Offshore Servers Haunt The Ocean-Based Micronation of ‘Sealand’
Late Christmas Eve, 1966, a retired British army major named Paddy Roy Bates piloted a motorboat seven miles off the coast of England to an abandoned anti-aircraft platform “and declared it conquered,” writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ian Urbina. Bates used it as a pirate radio station, sometimes spending several months there while living on tins of corned beef, rice pudding, flour,…
Judges Begin Ruling Against Some Porn Purveyors’ Use of Copyright Lawsuits
Slashdot reader pgmrdlm quotes Bloomberg: Pornography producers and sellers account for the lion’s share of copyright-infringement lawsuits in the U.S. — and judges may have seen enough. The courts are cracking down on porn vendors that file thousands of lawsuits against people for downloading and trading racy films on home computers, using tactics a judge called a “high tech shakedown.” [Alternate…
Are Nanosheet Transistor the Next (and Maybe Last) Step in Moore’s Law?
An anonymous reader quotes IEEE Spectrum:
Making smaller, better transistors for microprocessors is getting more and more difficult, not to mention fantastically expensive. Only Intel, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) are equipped to operate at this frontier of miniaturization. They are all manufacturing integrated circuits at the equivalent of what is called the 7-nanometer node… Right now, 7 nm is…
Is your supercomputer stumped? There may be a quantum solution
Some math problems are so complicated that they can bog down even the world’s most powerful supercomputers. But a wild new frontier in computing that applies the rules of the quantum realm offers a different approach. …
Space mining kits blast off for tests in orbit
Astronauts are to test the world’s first space mining devices, in an advance that could open up a new frontier in exploring the universe. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-07-space-kits-blast-orbit.html…
Privacy-Focused Android Q Still Lets Advertisers Track You
“The upcoming version of the Android operating system is taking a strong focus on privacy,” reports SD Times, “but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes it could still do better.” Android Q’s new privacy features include: user control over app access to device location, new limits on access to files in shared external storage, restrictions on launching activities, and restrictions on…