How IBM Is Making Your Passwords Useless
For years, quantum computing has been hailed as a technology that could change the way the modern world works, but a long-standing technical issue has kept that potential from being realized. Now, in a paper published in the journal Nature last week, IBM scientists have taken a big step (see how I avoided the temptation to make a pun there?) toward solving that problem — and while it could represent progress toward making quatum computers real, it also could mean that current cybersecurity standards will soon be much easier to crack. In other words, your passwords could be obsolete soon.
The power of quantum computing has some obvious appeal: The increase in processing power could speed up research, especially in big data applications. Problems with large datasets, or those that need many millions (or billions, or more) of simulations to develop a working theory, would be able to be run at speeds unthinkable today. This could mean giant leaps forward in medical research, where enhanced simulations can be used to test cancer treatments or work on the development of new vaccines for ebola, HIV, malaria and the other diseases. High-level physics labs like CERN could use the extra power to increase our understanding of the way the universe at large works.
But the most immediate impact for the regular person would be in the way your private information is kept safe. Current encryption relies on massively large prime numbers to encode your sensitive information. Using combinations of large prime numbers means that anyone trying to crack such encryption needs to attempt to factor at least one of those numbers to get into encrypted data. When you buy something from, say, Amazon, the connection between your computer and Amazon is encrypted using that basic system (it's more complicated than that, but that's the rough summary). The time it would take a digital computer to calculate these factors is essentially past the heat death of the universe. (Still, this won't help you if your password is password, or monkey, or 123456. Please, people, use a password manager.)
Quantum computing, however, increases processing speed and the actual nature of the computation so significantly that it reduces that time to nearly nothing, making current encryption much less secure.
The IBM researcher that could make that happen is complicated, and it requires some background explanation. For starters, while a "traditional" computing bit can be either a 0 or a 1, a quantum computing bit can have three (or infinite, depending on how you want to interpret the concept) states. More specifically, a qubit can be 0, 1, or both.
Up until now, the both part of that caused some problems in realizing the power of quantum computing.
Apparently — and you'll have to take this on faith a bit, as it hurts my head to think about it — the both state can switch back to either 0 or 1 at any given point, and sometimes incorrectly, based on the logic in the programming. Think about when your phone freezes up for a second or two while you're matching tiles. This is its processor handling vast amounts of information and filtering out the operations that fail for any number of reasons, from buggy code to malware to basic electrical noise. When there are only the two binary states, this is a process that usually happens behind the scenes and quickly.
The hold-up with quantum computing up until now is that the vastly greater potential for errors has stymied attempts to identify and nullify them. One additional wrinkle in this reading quantum states is familiar to anyone with basic science fiction knowledge, or perhaps just the ailurophobics. What if the action of reading the qubit actually causes it to collapse to 0 or 1?
The very smart people at IBM think they've solved this. The actual technical explanation is involved, and well beyond my ability to fully follow, but the gist is that instead of just having the qubits arrayed in a lattice on their own, they are arranged such that neighbors essentially check each other, producing the ability to check the common read problems.
That opens the door to further quantum computing developments, including ones that will make your password a thing of the past. So, does this mean that you need to start hoarding gold? No, not yet. And hopefully before quantum computing reaches commercial, or even simply industrial/governmental levels, a better cyber security method will be in place. Or the robots will have already taken over. I for one welcome them.
Trump’s Cabinet Would Benefit from Tax Plan Too
“Eliminating the estate tax would save the Trump Cabinet over a billion dollars," Oliver Willis writes. "Like Mnuchin, Trump’s secretaries would make out like bandits. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross would get an extra $545 million. The family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos would rake in $900 million. Linda McMahon, head of the Small Business Administration, and her husband, WWE founder Vince McMahon, would take in $250 million. Trump’s own net worth is in dispute, thanks to his failure to reveal his tax returns, but based on his estimated net worth of $3 billion, the estate tax scheme would net him $564 million.” (Shareblue Media, Bloomberg)
A Liberal Economist Shoots Down the GOP’s Fiscal Chicken Hawks
Republicans want a tax cut, but they don’t want to fully pay for it and may be willing to increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. This would continue a troubling cycle, economist Jared Bernstein writes, in which supposed fiscal conservatives “use the deficit argument to block spending, promote fiscal austerity, and small government, conveniently tossing deficit concerns aside when it comes to tax cuts.”
You’ll hear arguments about how increased economic growth will make up for the budgetary effects of the tax cuts, but don’t believe them. “Our fiscal history on this point is clear: Cutting taxes loses revenues, which, unless offset by higher taxes elsewhere or spending cuts, increases the budget deficit, which in turn raises the debt.” When this happens again, and the promised growth effects don’t materialize, the tax cutters will go back to pushing for spending cuts.
The country faces a number of serious challenges, including an aging population that by itself will require increased government spending, and we need a tax policy that does more than drive up the deficit. “The problem with structural deficits — ones that go up even in good times — is that they reveal that we’re unwilling to raise the necessary revenues to support the government we want and need. This enables those who whose goal is to shrink government to point to deficits and debt as their proof that we can’t afford it, whatever ‘it’ is, except when ‘it’ is tax cuts.” (New York Times)
Health Secretary Tom Price Under Fire for Use of Private Jets
Back in 2009, Tom Price spoke out against House Democrats who wanted to spend $550 million on private jets for lawmakers to use. A Republican representative from Georgia at the time, Price told CNBC that the purchase of the jets was “another example of fiscal irresponsibility run amok.” Now Secretary of Health and Human Services, Price seems to have changed his mind about the virtue of government officials using private jets at taxpayer expense. Just last week, Price used a chartered private jet to travel to three HHS events — including one at a resort in Maine — at an estimated cost of $60,000, Politico reports.
While previous HHS secretaries typically flew commercial, reports indicate that Price has been traveling by private jet for months. “Official travel by the secretary is done in complete accordance with Federal Travel Regulations,” an HHS spokesperson told Politico.
Critics on Twitter have been harsh:
More in-your-face kleptocracy from Tom Price.Take food stamps from poor, hungry kids- spend $25k from taxpayers to charter plane to Philly
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) September 20, 2017
1️⃣ Attack Medicaid while trading health stocks.
— Harry Stein (@HarrySteinDC) September 20, 2017
2️⃣ Spend funds that could give someone 4 years of Medicaid coverage to fly a private jet. https://t.co/GO5cfJgWgO
First Mnuchin, now Tom Price. The @realDonaldTrump Cabinet has a big problem charging taxpayers for private flights. https://t.co/th1QbGdfT7
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) September 20, 2017
Social Security Benefits Due for a Bigger Bump in 2018
In a few weeks the Social Security Administration will announce its cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for 2018. Inflation data for the month of August suggests that the adjustment could be the highest in five years, possibly over 2 percent, according to the Washington Examiner. Adjustments for the past five years have been relatively small: The cost of living adjustment for 2017 (announced last October) came in at a modest 0.3 percent, and the adjustment for 2016 was zero. Some retirees have complained in the past about small COLAs, but it’s worth remembering that higher adjustments are driven by higher inflation, which is bad news for people living on fixed incomes.
Americans Are Less Satisfied with Government Now Than a Year Ago
Gallup finds that just 28 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way the nation is being governed, down from 33 percent a year ago. And as we approach some potential fiscal battles, it's worth noting that the lowest satisfaction levels since Gallup started updating the measure annually in 2001 came in 2011 (19 percent) after a debt ceiling showdown that led to the U.S. credit rating being downgraded by S&P analysts and in 2013 (18 percent) during a federal government shutdown.
