Tag: interference

Single-atom probe uses quantum information for the first time

Sensors collect certain parameters such as temperature and air pressure in their proximity. Physicists from Kaiserslautern and a colleague from Hanover have succeeded for the first time in using a single cesium atom as a sensor for ultracold temperatures. To determine the measured data, they used quantum states—the spin or angular momentum of the atom. With these spins, they measured the…

MAVEN explores Mars to understand radio interference on Earth

NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft has discovered “layers” and “rifts” in the electrically charged part of the upper atmosphere (the ionosphere) of Mars. The phenomenon is very common at Earth and causes unpredictable disruptions to radio communications. However, we do not fully understand them because they form at altitudes that are very difficult to explore at Earth. The…

Amazon Asks Court To Halt Microsoft’s Work on Pentagon ‘War Cloud’

Amazon has asked a U.S. federal court to stop Microsoft from working with the Pentagon to implement a $10 billion cloud-computing contract, arguing that the project should stall until the courts work out whether Microsoft deserved to receive the lucrative deal. From a report: Amazon is suing the Department of Defense (DOD) over allegations that it allowed President Trump to exert…

Cloudflare is Giving Away Its Security Tools To US Political Campaigns

Network security giant Cloudflare said it will provide its security tools and services to U.S. political campaigns for free, as part of its efforts to secure upcoming elections against cyberattacks and election interference. From a report: The company said its new Cloudflare for Campaigns offering will include distributed denial-of-service attack mitigation, load balancing for campaign websites, a website firewall, and anti-bot…

Skype Audio Graded by Workers in China With ‘No Security Measures’

A Microsoft program to transcribe and vet audio from Skype and Cortana, its voice assistant, ran for years with “no security measures,” according to a former contractor who says he reviewed thousands of potentially sensitive recordings on his personal laptop from his home in Beijing over the two years he worked for the company. From a report: The recordings, both deliberate…

Massive New Cambridge Analytica Leak Will Show Global Voter Manipulation on ‘Industrial Scale’

A new leak of more than 100,000 documents from Cambridge Analytica’s work in 68 different countries “will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on ‘an industrial scale,'” writes the Guardian. Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed shares their report: The release of documents began on New Year’s Day on an anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, with links…

EarthSky’s 2020 meteor shower guide

All you need to know about major meteor showers in 2020. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guide…

How Should Students Respond To Their School’s Surveillance Systems?

Hundreds of thousands of American students are being tracked by their colleges to monitor attendance, analyze behavior and assess their mental health, the Washington Post reported this week. That article has now provoked some responses… Jay Balan, chief security researcher at Bitdefender, told Gizmodo that the makers of the student-tracking apps should at least offer bug bounties and disclose their source…

Baidu Has a New Trick For Teaching AI the Meaning of Language

Baidu, China’s closest equivalent to Google, has achieved the highest score at the General Language Understanding Evaluation (GLUE) AI competition. What’s notable about Baidu’s achievement is that it illustrates how AI research benefits from a diversity of contributors. MIT Technology Review explains: GLUE is a widely accepted benchmark for how well an AI system understands human language. It consists of nine…