Topic: COMPUTER - on July 23, 2013 at 6:34:00 PM CEST
The Bell Labs of Quantum Computing
Raymond Laflamme can’t yet sell you a quantum computer. But he’ll sell you a $13,000 logic board for measuring entangled photons.
It’s a start.
Laflamme is head of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, a research center that’s part of a quixotic, grandiose effort by Mike Lazaridis, cofounder of the smartphone maker BlackBerry, to invent a quantum computer and turn this city 70 miles from Toronto into a “Quantum Valley.”
Since 1999, Lazaridis has put $270 million behind his vision, paying to recruit some of the world’s best theoretical physicists. While he thinks a true quantum computer is still 10 years away, he believes initial discoveries can be commercialized now, turning Waterloo into a thriving industrial cluster built around quantum information science.
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Topic: SECURITY - on July 23, 2013 at 6:31:00 PM CEST
NSA Can Reportedly Track Phones Even When They're Turned Off
The NSA has a diverse range of surveillance capabilities—from monitoring Google Maps use to sifting through millions of phone call records and spying on Web searches. But it doesn’t end there. The agency can also track down the location of a cellphone even if the handset is turned off, according to a new report.
On Monday, the Washington Post published a story focusing on how massively the NSA has grown since the 9/11 attacks. Buried within it, there was a small but striking detail: By September 2004, the NSA had developed a technique that was dubbed “The Find” by special operations officers. The technique, the Post reports, was used in Iraq and “enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off.” This helped identify “thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq,” according to members of the special operations unit interviewed by the Post.
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Topic: ART - on July 23, 2013 at 1:13:00 PM CEST
Bomb It 2
Jon Reiss' global graffiti documentary follow-up, Bomb It 2, takes audiences to previously unexplored areas of the Middle East, Europe, Asia & the United States.
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Topic: SECURITY - on July 23, 2013 at 12:58:00 PM CEST
German Minister Calls Security A 'Super Fundamental Right' That Outranks Privacy; German Press Call Him 'Idiot In Charge'
One of the striking features of the Snowden story is that there has been no serious attempt to deny the main claims about massive, global spying. Instead, the fall-back position has become: well, yeah, maybe we did some of that, but look how many lives were saved as a result. For example, the day after the first leaks appeared, it was suggested that PRISM was responsible for stopping a plot to bomb the NYC subways. However, further investigation showed that probably wasn't the case.
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Topic: Space - on July 23, 2013 at 12:42:00 PM CEST
Ride with the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn
This beautiful video shows a selection from more than 200,000 pictures taken by NASA’s Cassini as it has orbited in and among Saturn’s rings and moons over the past years. Fabio Di Donato posted it on Vimeo yesterday, as part of the celebration today honoring a new photo of Earth to be taken by Cassini today.
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