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.
Comcast to Cut the Cord with Time Warner
Comcast is dropping its merger with Time Warner after a year of regulatory pushback, according to Bloomberg. The news wire's unnamed sources say there will be an announcement tomorrow.
In today's changing media landscape it is not really clear what the preemptive breakup of a media megacorp (formed from mere media titans) will mean for consumers, especially in the face of Verizon's push to slim down its bundled offerings, the new ala carte service from HBO and the continued expansion of Netflix's original programming. As more and more people cut the cord, the market for traditional cable TV is eroding, and more consumers opt simply for an Internet connection.
Even without that, Comcast dropping its deal probably will have no impact at all for the average cable subscriber, given the already segregated monopolies allowed individual cable companies. So, unless you own stock in either of these companies, this is pretty much just more status quo in a rapidly changing market.
Can Low Self-Control Turn You Into Edward Snowden?
Be very wary if your employer asks you to take a test and then says please put on this cap. The cap could have sensors measuring your “self-control,” which researchers at Iowa State University have connected to—cybersecurity.
Yup—this wasn’t about eating the last cookie, having sex with a stranger, or taking a hit from some unknown new drug just because your friend said it was an amazing experience. The test measures how long someone hesitates before doing something risky or wrong.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll wait a few seconds before robbing that jewelry store! If they waited, the researchers determined that the employees were considering the consequences of their actions and therefore had higher self-control than those who simply filled their duffle bag with whatever bling was in sight.
Those with higher self-control were deemed better cyber security risks than the low self-control group.
But who knows? Maybe the high group was just casing the joint and calculating how much they could carry without getting caught. Or maybe they were searching for the largest unflawed diamond in the case that could be hidden in their pocket!
So much for brainwaves.
These Students Are Making Even More Than They Expect After Graduation
College students who major in STEM fields generally know that they can make more money than their peers once they graduate, but they don’t know how much more.
Turns out, those students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, actually have starting salaries that are higher than expected, according to a new report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Engineering majors, for example, expect to earn $56,000, but actually receive 15.5 percent more than that, with starting salaries average nearly $65,000. Computer Science majors expect to make around $51,000, but receive 22 percent for an average starting salary of $62,000.
Chemistry majors have the largest gap between expectations and reality: They expect to earn an average of $39,000 but take home an average $58,000 in their first year, a 51 percent increase.
Related: The Closing of the Millennial Mind on Campus
The typical college graduate in 2014 received a starting salary of $48,000. Liberal arts and humanities majors had the lowest starting salary, with an average of just $39,000, according to NACE.
Not only do STEM majors enjoy higher salaries, but they can also expect more job security and better job prospects. All of the top 25 jobs recently compiled by U.S. News and World Report fell into either a science- or math-based discipline.
Still, not everyone has the interest or aptitude to excel in a STEM career. A third of those who begin their college career majoring in those fields end up transferring to a difference study area, according to a recent report by RTI International.
Will Obama Send a Smoke Signal About Weed?
The resignation of Michele M. Leonhart, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, just one day after 4/20 -- which is sort of Thanksgiving for stoners -- offers President Obama an opportunity to replace her with someone who shares his relatively benign view of marijuana.
The right appointment might also be a gift to Hillary Rodham Clinton since it would signal to younger voters that it's not just libertarian-leaning Republicans like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky who want to decriminalize the use of pot.
Representative Early Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, told The New York Times that Obama should appoint someone who "understands the federal approach to marijuana isn't working."
Related: How to Stop Cyber Attacks: Let Workers Smoke Pot
The flashpoint that led to the departure of Leonhart after a 35-year career at the D.E.A. was a congressional hearing that revealed agency agents in Colombia had taken part in parties with prostitutes paid by drug cartels. But Leonhart, who has lumped marijuana in with crack, meth and heroin, found herself at odds with the President, who has called pot no more dangerous than alcohol.
“Hopefully this is a sign that the Reefer Madness era is coming to an end at the D.E.A.,” Mason Tvert, the director on communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, told Bloomberg Politics.
How to Stop Cyber Attacks: Let Workers Smoke Pot
What’s true for the government is true for business. FBI Director James Comey thinks you can’t hire top tech talent with a ban on weed. It all started in the Reagan administration, which imposed a no-hire policy for applicants who toked up within the past three years. Good luck with that.
In 2014, Comey raised the issue during a speech: “A lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana. I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview.”
That’s not the only reason the government can’t hire competent programmers and white hat hackers. They come at a high price, there’s a shortage, and they hate red tape and bureaucratic annoyances. For some lawmakers, though, it’s easier to get lost in the weed than try to reform the federal hiring process. That’s why Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) have two proposals in the House requiring info from the intelligence director on how classifying pot as Schedule 1 narcotic crimps the feds recruiting efforts.