Toggle light / dark theme

Google and NSA Competing to Build World’s Most Powerful Quantum Computer

Over the next 3 to 5 years you will see more and more in tech (medical/ bio, chip/ semiconductors, software, AI, services, platform, etc.) adopting QC in their nextgen products and services. We’re (as in Vern B. — D-Wave co-founder and CEO terms) in the Era of Quantum Computing. I highly urge techies to learn about QC so that you remain relevant.


Google is being driven by need to prevent the NSA from breaking into its system to access confidential personal data of its millions of users. On the other hand, the NSA is bent on cracking the tough encryption systems Google and other tech firms use to shield their information from them. Quantum computers will attain this aim for both Google and the NSA.

Google recently said it’s gotten closer to building a universal quantum computer. A team of Google researchers in California and Spain has built an experimental prototype of a quantum computer that can solve a wide range of problems and has the potential to be scaled up to larger systems.

The Google prototype combines the two main approaches to quantum computing. One approach constructs the computer’s digital circuits using quantum bits or qubits in specific arrangements geared to solve a specific problem. The other approach is called adiabatic quantum computing (AQC).

Android Creator Andy Rubin Bets Big On Quantum Computing And Smartphone AI

Smart man.


Android creator Andy Rubin has several tricks up his sleeve. Rubin’s company Playground is currently tinkering with quantum computing and smartphone AI, and he believes that this combination could create a conscious intelligence that would underpin all of technology.

andy rubin

Rubin and his team of roughly fifteen engineers, who hold experience in everything from computer science to mechanical engineering, are currently working with about fifteen other companies to release new and innovative products. Playground enjoys “hatching” new companies within the company and using its vast resources. One such hatchling is a quantum computing firm that Rubin refuses to name. He thinks the company could one day commercialize quantum devices using standard manufacturing processes. Quantum computing has the potential to boost processing power.

Android inventor Andy Rubin thinks the future of smartphones might be a single AI

Andy Rubin, who co-founded Android and jump-started Google’s robotics efforts, imagines a future where artificial intelligence is so powerful that it powers every connected device. Speaking at Bloomberg’s Tech Conference in San Francisco today, Rubin said a combination of quantum computing and AI advancements could yield a conscious intelligence that would underpin every piece of technology. “If you have computing that is as powerful as this could be, you might only need one,” Rubin says. “It might not be something you carry around; it just has to be conscious.”

It sounds outlandish and theoretical, and it is. But Rubin, with his investment fund Playground Global, is investing in companies trying to make that kind of wondrous future a reality. One such company, a quantum computing firm Rubin would not name, is composed of researchers he thinks may one day commercialize quantum devices using standard manufacturing processes. Quantum computing promises exponential boosts in processing power, in part by harnessing the probabilistic nature inherent to the physics discipline.

Rubin thinks there’s substantial overlap coming down the line for quantum computing, AI, and robotics. “In order for AI to blossom and fulfill consumer needs, it has to be about data,” he says. “That’s where robotics come in — robots are walking mobile sensors, who can sense their environment and interact and learn from those interactions.” Furthermore, Rubin adds, both AI and quantum computing are good at pattern matching and could greatly complement one another. “Those two things combined in hundreds of years might get us to the point of this conundrum, who is the master and who is the servant and all that,” he says.

Five weirdest password alternatives of all time

Computers can identify you based on your butt and your walk, not to mention your smell…

Around half of consumers would “choose anything but a traditional username and password account registration when given the option”, according to identity management firm Gigya.

But would they choose these truly bizarre password alternatives that have been proposed over the years, and would your business be safer switching to them? 1. Biometric Buttocks.

Quantum Computation: A cryptography armageddon?

Glad that folks have awaken to the fact that QC is indeed coming and best to learn about this technology and make it part of the IT’s Future State.

http://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/06/14/quantum-computation

Cryptography-armageddon/


ESET’s Cassius Puodzius takes an in-depth look at cryptography, exploring quantum computing (one of the resources in the toolkit of cryptanalysts).

X-ray Experiments Show Hewlett Packard Team How Memristors Work

In experiments at two Department of Energy national labs – SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – scientists at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have experimentally confirmed critical aspects of how a new type of microelectronic device, the memristor, works at an atomic scale.

This result is an important step in designing these solid-state devices for use in future computer memories that operate much faster, last longer and use less energy than today’s flash memory. The results were published in February in Advanced Materials.

“We need information like this to be able to design memristors that will succeed commercially,” said Suhas Kumar, an HPE scientist and first author on the group’s technical paper.

How Quantum Computing Can Make Finance More Scientific

Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance. Apply here to join Singularity University, CNBC, and hundreds of the world’s most forward-thinking financial leaders at Exponential Finance in June 2017.

Modern life is punctuated by market cycles.

One year the gears of commerce are whirring along. Businesses are hiring and investing. People are buying houses and cars, televisions and computers. Things are going great. Then a year later, the gears screech to halt—sweeping layoffs, plummeting investment, and crashing markets. No one’s buying anything.

Microsoft’s LinkedIn buy escalates cloud wars

“With the LinkedIn acquisition, Microsoft snares two prizes: the massive amounts of data contained in LinkedIn’s 433 million member profiles that are kept scrupulously up to date by business professionals and to which competitors have no access and the brainy computer algorithms that crunch that data.” the writeup.


Buying the Facebook of professional networks is perhaps the best illustration yet that the cloud wars are heating up.

/* */