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.
The 3 Big Reasons You’re Getting Nothing Done at Work
Cell phones often get blamed for the always-on work culture that keeps us tethered to our jobs around the clock.
Turns out they might be the reason we’re not getting our work done during office hours in the first place. More than half of employers say that cell phones and texting are the biggest productivity killers at work, making them the number one distraction, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder.com.
Other top productivity killers included the Internet, named by 44 percent of employers, gossip (37 percent), and social media (37 percent).
Related: 10 Ways to Boost Happiness at Work
“There are so many stimulants in today’s workplace, it’s easy to see how employees get sidetracked,” Rosemary Haefner, Career Builder’s Chief Human Resources Officer said in a statement “The good news is, taking breaks from work throughout the day can actually be good for productivity, enabling the mind to take a break from the job at hand and re-energize you.”
Nearly half of employers said that such distractions compromised the quality of work, and 30 percent said they caused lower morale since other workers had to pick up slack for their preoccupied peers. A quarter of employers said that distractions hurt the boss/employee relationship.
Nearly 3 in 4 employers have been proactive about battling productivity killers, with a third blocking certain Internet sites and 23 percent banning personal cell phone calls and usage on the job.
Haefner recommends that workers stay focused by scheduling breaks, surrounding themselves with productive people and taking walks to rejuvenate the brain.
3 Big Reasons You’re Getting Nothing Done at Work
Cell phones often get blamed for the always-on work culture that keeps us tethered to our jobs around the clock.
Turns out they might be the reason we’re not getting our work done during office hours in the first place. More than half of employers say that cell phones and texting are the biggest productivity killers at work, making them the number one distraction, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder.com.
Other top productivity killers included the Internet, named by 44 percent of employers, gossip (37 percent), and social media (37 percent).
Related: 10 Ways to Boost Happiness at Work
“There are so many stimulants in today’s workplace, it’s easy to see how employees get sidetracked,” Rosemary Haefner, Career Builder’s Chief Human Resources Officer said in a statement “The good news is, taking breaks from work throughout the day can actually be good for productivity, enabling the mind to take a break from the job at hand and re-energize you.”
Nearly half of employers said that such distractions compromised the quality of work, and 30 percent said they caused lower morale since other workers had to pick up slack for their preoccupied peers. A quarter of employers said that distractions hurt the boss/employee relationship.
Nearly 3 in 4 employers have been proactive about battling productivity killers, with a third blocking certain Internet sites and 23 percent banning personal cell phone calls and usage on the job.
Haefner recommends that workers stay focused by scheduling breaks, surrounding themselves with productive people and taking walks to rejuvenate the brain.
Now 16-Year-Olds Can Double Your Car Insurance
As if you don’t have enough to worry about when your 16-year-old hits the road for the first time, get ready to see your insurance bill nearly double.
The average insurance premium for a married couple goes up 80 percent on average when adding a teen, but it spikes a full 16 percent more for adding a 16-year-old, according to a new report by InsuranceQuotes.com.
Requesting a “good student” discount is one way to offset the premium hike. “I’ve seen discounts as high as 25 percent for students who maintain at least a B average in high school or college,” InsuranceQuotes.com senior analyst Laura Adams said in a statement.
Related: The Best Time to Buy Car Insurance
And once a teen hits the ripe old age of 19, insurance increases by just 60 percent.
It’s much more expensive to insure teenage boys, with premiums increasing 92 percent for teen males versus just 67 percent for girls.
The analysis found that teenagers cost the most to insure in New Hampshire (115 percent increase), but parents will also see premiums double in Wyoming, Illinois, Maine and Rhode Island.
Hawaii is the only state that prohibits insurance companies from basing insurance quotes on age or length of driving experience, so it has the lowest increase in the nation (17 percent). Other states where parents won’t take as big a hit are New York (53 percent) and Michigan (57 percent).
Parents may be able to nab better car insurance rates by shopping around with several insurers.
Thinking Ahead Could Be Holding Women Back
Different attitudes in how men and women prepare for their futures might be a factor contributing to the gender gap, a new study published in Gender & Society finds.
In imagining their work paths, women were disproportionately more likely to think and worry about parenthood than men. And in anticipation of the responsibilities and challenges that parenthood brings, women were more likely than men to downscale or alter their career goals.
Brooke Conroy Bass, who wrote the article, conducted in-depth interviews with 30 heterosexual couples between 25 and 34 who have not (yet) had children.
Related: Millennial Women Are Taking Charge – at Home and at Work
Preparing for the future has emotional and behavioral consequences for women that men don’t suffer as much from, she found. Because of these “gendered anticipations of parenthood,” the inequality in the market starts much earlier than we tend to think.
Bass told Futurity that career trajectories among men and women shift as parenthood approaches, with men investing more effort in their jobs and women dialing back.
The study suggests that part of the problem contributing to the gender wage gap, penalization for maternity leave and the difficulty of making it to the top is anticipating the future.
But should women be penalized for displaying foresight, a characteristic that employers usually value?
American Kids Aren’t Such Stoners After All
Turns out the young people of America are not as high as you thought they were. The use of illicit drugs, alcohol and tobacco among young people has been falling, according to new data.
While the nationwide rate of illicit drug use has gone up, the percentage of youths using illicit drugs has declined, according to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMSHA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The illicit drugs include marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), hallucinogens, heroin, inhalants or prescription-type psychotherapeutics.
Among youths aged 12 to 17, the rate of illicit drug use was down to 8.8 percent in 2013 from 9.5 to 11.6 percent in the years 2002 to 2007, the SAMSHA study said.
Related: New Lifetime Estimate of Obesity Costs: $92,235 Per Person
But in 2013, drug use among those 12 or older was up to 9.4 percent from the 7.9 to 8.7 percent found between 2002 and 2009. The rise was attributed to increased rates of marijuana use, both medical and nonmedical, among adults aged 26 and older — and that rise probably doesn't fully reflect the recent legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.
The report also suggested that alcohol is losing some of its allure for the young.
Between 2002 and 2013, the percentage of underage people who drank declined from 28.8 percent to 22.7 percent. In addition, the proportion of binge drinkers — those who consumed five or more drinks during one occasion — decreased from 19.3 percent to 14.2 percent in the same years.
In additional good news, tobacco and cigarette use among all age groups has declined sharply since 2002.