Cloud Hosting

Page 4,358«..10 20..4,3574,3584,359 4,360..4,370 4,380..»

The cloud computing tidal wave – BetaNews

May 8, 2017 | Author: admin

The title above is a play on the famous Bill Gates memo, The Internet Tidal Wave, written in May, 1995. Gates, on one of his reading weeks, realized that the Internet was the future of IT and Microsoft, through Gatess own miscalculation, was then barely part of that future. So he wrote the memo, turned the company around, built Internet Explorer, and changed the course of business history.

Thats how people tend to read the memo, as a snapshot of technical brilliance and ambition. But the inspiration for the Gates memo was another document, The Final Days of Autodesk, written in 1991 by Autodesk CEO John Walker. Walkers memo was not about how the future could be saved, but about how seemingly invincible market advantages could be quickly lost. If Autodesk, the Computer Aided Design pioneer, was ever going to die, this was how Walker figured it would happen. And Gates believed him. Now its about to happen again. Amazon Web Services -- the first and still largest public computing cloud -- is 11 years old, which is old enough for there not only to be some clear cloud computing winners (AWS, Microsoft Azure and a bunch of startups) but some obvious losers, too. This rising tide is not raising all ships. Thats why its time for the Cloud Computing Tidal Wave.

In the world of computing, almost every platform transition creates a new market giant. Old companies generally die to make way for new companies. Univac and Burroughs were parts of the mainframe era that didnt survive, replaced by minicomputers from companies like Digital, Data General and Prime. Those companies in turn gave way to personal computing pioneers like Apple, Compaq, and Microsoft. Only IBM seemed to remain a constant from one hardware generation to the next. But now were in the mobile era and IBM has almost no presence there, so the platform transition rule may still hold true.

The new things the cloud and that wave will have its new champions, too, as well as losers. Weve tended to focus our attention on providers of cloud hosting services, but the cloud is much more than data centers and servers. Its applications and services, too, and hardly any of those are coming from old guard companies.

First among the losers in cloud computing are the venerable mainframes that survive today mainly because Big Business still relies on a lot of old COBOL code -- code too big to be comfortable on a PC or even a minicomputer. But the cloud scales infinitely and COBOL is heading there and it can only hurt mainframe computer makers.

Suffering, too are the personal computer makers. As processing moves from the desktop to the cloud, desktops get punier, cheaper, and less profitable. Theres money to be made in the initial transformation from desktop to cloud, but what happens when all those desktops have been replaced? For the most part they wont need to be upgraded ever. The three-year PC upgrade cycle for businesses is already being disrupted. I am writing this column on a mid-2010 Apple MacBook Pro -- a seven year old computer I have no plans to replace because it works just fine, thanks to the boost it gets from cloud services.

In every platform transition there are companies that probably cant make the jump. One of those that stands out today especially because it has been in the news is Citrix Systems, the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) pioneer. VDI is, on first glance, a lot like the cloud. Citrix even refers to itself as a "cloud services company." But VDI isnt the cloud. VDI allows businesses to make one PC serve several users or one server help dozens or hundreds. But in cloud computing even the PC is virtual, which is very different.

Old market leaders like Citrix are making too much profit in legacy VDI contracts to really switch to the cloud. The company cant bring itself to make obsolete its own products and so thats left to some other company -- in the case of Citrix the likely vanquisher is a Silicon Valley startup called Frame, which has been moving companies like Adobe, Autodesk, HP, and Siemens to the cloud.

Citrix, which hired Goldman Sachs earlier this year to help it find a buyer, would probably love to sell itself to Microsoft, but how likely is that given Microsofts absolute commitment to the cloud? Not very.

More:
The cloud computing tidal wave - BetaNews

World’s First Quantum Computer Is Here – Wall Street Pit – Wall Street Pit

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

China has achieved another remarkable feat. Aside from having the worlds fastest supercomputer (TaihuLight), they have now developed a quantum computer that can supposedly work 24,000 times faster than any existing supercomputer, including their own.

While other tech companies like D-Wave and IBM have already managed to build their own quantum computers, what differentiates Chinas quantum computer is the use of multiple photons (the visible particles of light), specifically five of them, which is what gives its computing speed a super boost.

Prior to this, Pan Jianwei the leader of the research team from the University of Science and Technology of China who built the multi-photon quantum computer together with one of his colleagues, Lu Chaoyang, was credited with developing the worlds best semiconductor quantum dots-based single photon source. Using this photon source and an electronically programmable photonic circuit, made it possible for them to build their multi-photon quantum computing device.

According to Pan Jianwei, their machine can do calculations 10 to 100 times faster than ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer built in the 1940s. And while theres no practical use for it yet, its ability to predict the highly complex behavior and movement of photons (something that traditional computers are incapable of doing) is a clear testament to the potential of quantum computers.

Traditional computers store and process information in bits that can represent either 0 or 1. On the other hand, quantum computers use qubits (short for quantum bits) that can represent 0, or 1, or 0 and 1 simultaneously through the quantum concepts superpositioning (being able to exist in two states at once) and entanglement. This is what makes a quantum computer special it can process data and calculate outcomes simultaneously. And the more qubits that can be manipulated, the faster its computing ability becomes.

A common analogy used to explain the concept of quantum computing is reading books in a library. With traditional computing, its like reading one book at a time, finishing one before moving on to another. With quantum computing, its like reading all the books at the same time.

This theory has been around for a while, but researchers have yet to figure out the best approach that can transform this quantum computing dream into a reality.

This is what makes Chinas accomplishment so significant. Their latest quantum device which they are calling a Boson sampling machine isnt just able to perform calculations for five photons; its able to do so at a speed thats 24,000 times faster than what previous proof-of-concept experiments showed. Even better, the team says that scaling up their architecture to a higher number of photons is feasible, adding up to its potential to compete and defeat the performance of classical computers.

According to Shanghai Daily, the team is aiming to be able to manipulate 20 entangled photons by the end of the year. Their research was recently published on Nature Photonics.

Read the original:
World's First Quantum Computer Is Here - Wall Street Pit - Wall Street Pit

China adds a quantum computer to high-performance computing arsenal – PCWorld

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

Thank you

Your message has been sent.

There was an error emailing this page.

China already has the world's fastest supercomputer and has now built a crude quantum computer that could outpace today's PCs and servers.

Quantum computers have already been built by companies like IBM and D-Wave, but Chinese researchers have taken a different approach. They are introducing quantum computing using multiple photons, which could provide a superior way to calculate compared to today's computers.

The Chinese quantum computing architecture allows forfive-photonsampling and entanglement. It's an improvement over previous experiments involving single-photon sourcing, up to 24,000 times faster, the researchers claimed.

The Chinese researchers have built components required for Boson sampling, which has been theorized for a long time and is considered an easy way to build a quantum computer. The architecture built by the Chinese can include a large number of photons, which increases the speed and scale of computing.

China is strengthening its technology arsenal in an effort to be self-sufficient. China's homegrown chip powers TaihuLight, the world's fastest computer.

In 2014, China said it would spend US$150 billion on semiconductor development so that PCs and mobile devices would convert to homegrown chips. Afraid that low-cost Chinese chips will flood the market, the U.S. earlier this year accused China of rigging the semiconductor market to its advantage.

It's not clear yet if a quantum computer is on China's national agenda. But China's rapid progress of technology is worrying countries like the U.S. A superfast quantum computer could enhance the country's progress in areas like weapons development, in which high-performance computers are key.

But there's a long way to go before China builds its first full-fledged quantum computer. The prototype quantum computer is good for specific uses but is not designed to be a universal quantum computer that can run any task.

The research behind quantum computers is gaining steam as PCs and servers reach their limit. It's becoming difficult to shrink chips to smaller geometries, which could upset the cycle of reducing costs of computers while boosting speeds.

If they deliver on their promise, quantum computers will drive computing into the future. They are fundamentally different from computers used today.

Bits on todays computers are stored as ones or zeros, while quantum computers rely on qubits, also called quantum bits. Qubits can achieve various states, including holding a one and zero simultaneously, and those states can multiply.

The parallelism allows qubits to do more calculations simultaneously. However, qubits are considered fragile and highly unstable, and can easily breakdown during entanglement, a technical term for when qubits interact. A breakdown could bring instability to a computing process.

The Chinese quantum computer has a photon device based on quantum dots, demultiplexers, photonic circuits, and detectors.

There are multiple ways to build a quantum computer, including via superconducting qubits, which is the building block for D-Wave Systems' systems. Like the Chinese system, D-Wave's quantum annealing method is another easy way to build a quantum computer but is not considered ideal for a universal quantum computer.

IBM already has a 5-qubit quantum computer that is available via the cloud. It is now chasing a universal quantum computer using superconducting qubitsbut has a different gating model to stabilize systems. Microsoft is trying to chase a new quantum computer based on a new topography and a yet-undiscovered particle called non-abelian anyons.

In a bid to build computers of the future, China has also built a neuromorphic chip called Darwin.

Here is the original post:
China adds a quantum computer to high-performance computing arsenal - PCWorld

The Quantum Computer Revolution Is Closer Than You May Think – National Review

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

Lets make no mistake: The race for a quantum computer is the new arms race.

As Arthur Herman wrote in a recent NRO article, Quantum Cryptography: A Boon for Security, the competition to create the first quantum computer is heating up. The country that develops one first will have the ability to cripple militaries and topple the global economy. To deter such activity, and to ensure our security, the United States must win this new race to the quantum-computer revolution.

Classical computers operate in bits, with each bit being either a 0 or 1. Quantum computers, by contrast, operate in quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously. Therefore, quantum computers can do nearly infinite calculations at once, rather than sequentially. Because of these properties, a single quantum computer could be the master key to hijack our country.

The danger of a quantum computer is its ability to tear through the encryption protecting most of our online data, which means it could wipe out the global financial system or locate weapons of mass destruction. Quantum computers operate much differently from todays classical computers and could crack encryption in less time than it takes to snap ones fingers.

In 2016, 4.2 billion computerized records in the United States were compromised, a staggering 421 percent increase from the prior year. Whats more, foreign countries are stealing encrypted U.S. data and storing it because they know that in roughly a decade, quantum computers will be able to get around the encryption.

Many experts agree that the U.S. still has the advantage in the nascent world of quantum computing, thanks to heavy investment by giants such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM, D-Wave, and Google. Yet with China graduating 4.7 million of its students per year with STEM degrees while the U.S. graduates a little over half a million, how long can the U.S. maintain its lead?

Maybe not for long. Half of the global landmark scientific achievements of 2014 were led by a European consortium and the other half by China, according to a 2015 MIT study. The European Union has made quantum research a flagship project over the next ten years and is committed to investing nearly $1 billion. While the U.S. government allocates about $200 million per year to quantum research, a recent congressional report noted that inconsistent funding has slowed progress.

According to Dr. Chad Rigetti, a former member of IBMs quantum-computing group and now the CEO of Rigetti Computing, computing superiority is fundamental to long-term economic superiority, safety, and security. Our strategy, he continues, has to be viewing quantum computing as a way to regain American superiority in high-performance computing.

Additionally, cyber-policy advisor Tim Polk stated publicly that our edge in quantum technologies is under siege. In fact, China leads in unhackable quantum-enabled satellites and owns the worlds fastest supercomputers.

While quantum computers will lead to astounding breakthroughs in medicine, manufacturing, artificial intelligence, defense, and more, rogue states or actors could use quantum computers for fiercely destructive purposes. Recall the hack of Sony by North Korea, Russian spies hacking Yahoo accounts, and the exposure of 22 million federal Office of Personnel Management records by Chinese hackers.

How can the United States win this race? We must take a multi-pronged approach to guard against the dangers of quantum computers while reaping their benefits. The near-term priority is to implement quantum-cybersecurity solutions, which fully protect against quantum-computer attacks. Solutions can soon be built directly into devices, accessed via the cloud, integrated with online browsers, or implemented alongside existing fiber-optic infrastructure.

Second, the U.S. needs to consider increasing federal research and development and boost incentives for industry and academia to develop technologies that align private interests with national-security interests, since quantum technology will lead to advances in defense and forge deterrent capabilities.

Third, as private companies advance quicker than government agencies, Washington should engage regularly with industry. Not only will policies evolve in a timely manner, but government agencies could become valuable early adopters.

Fourth, translating breakthroughs in the lab to commercial development will require training quantum engineers. Dr. Robert Schoelkopf, director of the Yale Quantum Institute, launched Quantum Circuits, Inc., to bridge this gap and to perform the commercial development of a quantum computer.

The United States achieved the unthinkable when it put a man on the Moon. Creating the first quantum computer will be easier but the consequences if we dont will be far greater.

Idalia Friedson is a research assistant at the Hudson Institute.

China builds five qubit quantum computer sampling and will scale to 20 qubits by end of this year and could any beat … – Next Big Future

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

Chinese researchers have built a 10 qubit quantum computer.

China builds ten qubit quantum computer, They will scale to 20 qubits by end of this year and could beat the performance of any regular computer next year with a 30 qubit system.

A chinese research team led by Pan Jianwei is exploring three technical routes to quantum computers: 1. systems based on single photons, 2. ultra-cold atoms and 3. superconducting circuits.

Experimental set-up for multiphoton boson-sampling. The set-up includes four key parts: the single-photon device, demultiplexers, ultra-low-loss photonic circuit and detectors. The single-photon device is a single InAs/GaAs quantum dot coupled to a 2-m-diameter micropillar cavity

Pan Jianwei and his colleagues Lu Chaoyang and Zhu Xiaobo, of the University of Science and Technology of China, and Wang Haohua, of Zhejiang University set two international records in quantum control of the maximal numbers of entangled photonic quantum bits And entangled superconducting quantum bits.

Pan doubling that manipulation of multi-particle entanglement is the core of quantum computing technology and has been the focus of international competition in quantum computing research.

In the photonic system, his team has made the first 5, 6, 8 and 10 entangled photons in the world and is at the forefront of global developments.

Last year, Pan and Lu Chaoyang developed the worlds best single photon source based on semiconductor quantum dots. Now, they are using the high-performance single photon source and electronically programmable photonic circuit to build a multi-photon quantum computing prototype to run the Boson Sampling task.

The Chinese photonic computer is 10 to 100 times faster than the first electronic computer, ENIAC, and the first transistor computer, TRADIC, in running the classical algorithm.

The Hefei reporter quantum device, called a boson sampling machine, can now carry out calculations for five photons, but at a speed 24,000 times than previous experiments.

ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and approximately 5,000,000 hand-soldered joints. It could perform 5000 simple addition or subtraction operations per second. ENIAC could perform 500 floating point operations per second.

The Chinese team led by Pan, Zhu Xiaobo and Wang Haohua have broken that record. They dependent developed a superconducting quantum circuit containing 10 superconducting quantum bits and successfully entangled the 10 quantum bits through a global quantum operation.

Nature Photonics High-efficiency multiphoton boson sampling

They will try to design and manipulate 20 superconducting quantum bits by the end of the year. They also plan to launch a quantum cloud computing platform by the end of this year.

Our architecture is feasible to be scaled up to a larger number of photons and with a higher rate to race against increasingly advanced computers, they said in the research paper.

Professor Scott Aaronson, who is based at the University of Texas at Austin and proposed the idea of the boson sampling machine, questioned whether it was useful to compare the latest results with technology developed over 60 years ago, but he said the research had shown Exciting experimental progress .

Its a step towards boson sampling with say 30 photons or some number thats large enough that no one will have to squint or argue about whether a quantum advantage has been attained, he said.

Araronson said one of the main purposes of making boson sampling machines was to prove that quantum devices could be shown to have an advantage in one area of complex calculations over existing types of computer.

Doing so would answer the quantum computing sceptics and help pave the way towards universal quantum computation, he said.

Abstract

Boson sampling is considered as a strong candidate to demonstrate quantum computational supremacy over classical computers. However, previous proof-of-principle experiments suffered from small photon number and low sampling rates owing to the inefficiencies of the single-photon sources and multiport optical interferometers. Here, we develop two central components for high-performance boson sampling: robust multiphoton interferometers with 99% transmission rate and actively demultiplexed single-photon sources based on a quantum dotmicropillar with simultaneously high efficiency, purity and indistinguishability. We implement and validate three-, four- and five-photon boson sampling, and achieve sampling rates of 4.96kHz, 151Hz and 4Hz, respectively, which are over 24,000 times faster than previous experiments. Our architecture can be scaled up for a larger number of photons and with higher sampling rates to compete with classical computers, and might provide experimental evidence against the extended ChurchTuring thesis.

18 pages of supplemental material

View post:
China builds five qubit quantum computer sampling and will scale to 20 qubits by end of this year and could any beat ... - Next Big Future

From the Desk of Jay Fallis: To internet vote, or not to internet vote – BarrieToday

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

On occasion, when I forget my padlock at home, I have left my gym bag unlocked in the change room. In these instances, I take comfort knowing that most people in my community are honest and would not take my belongings. As of yet, I have not been stolen from. However, continuing this practice might one day have consequences.

This scenario is analogous of implementing internet voting in municipal elections. By exposing our democratic process through online ballot casting and tabulation, we would be at risk of manipulation on a large scale. Our one protection against such criminal action is based on the fact that most of those in our community would not willingly compromise our democratic system.

Over the past few years, many municipalities in the Barrie area have adopted or considered adopting online voting methods. While Barrie itself continues to use electronic tabulators instead of internet voting, Innisfil, Springwater, Oro-Medonte, and Penetanguishene will offer online voting in 2018 municipal elections. This past Monday, Orillia almost followed suit to permit internet voting. However, the Orillia city council narrowly defeated the proposal.

In the days leading up to the vote in Orillia, I talked with Councilor Mason Ainsworth to get a sense for this debate. Ainsworth has been a staunch opponent of internet voting. We started by talking about whether turnout rates might be affected by online voting.

There are a lot of studies out there in regards to the voter turnout of online voting and pretty much all of them say that it doesnt increase turnout. This makes sense because really youre getting the same people who are voting either way.

While there are particular instances where turnout has improved after the implementation of online voting, most studies suggest that online voting does not have the capacity to increase voter turnout. Although access to the polls is improved using these alternative methods, generally speaking, those in the past who do not participate in municipal elections will continue these tendencies under a new voting system.

Additionally, there are significant drawbacks associated with online voting. The first that Ainsworth talked about was voter fraud.

In regards to fraud were not sure, and staff has openly said in the [council] meeting that they wouldnt know if this happened: If somebody else is voting for somebody, he said.

Ainsworth went on to suggest that online voting methods could allow a member of a household to vote on the behalf of another, and that such actions could be carried out with bad intentions. According to Ainsworth, our current system guards against this problem, by obligating voters to mark their ballot in privacy.

Internet hacking was also a consideration for Ainsworth. After being asked about the security measures taken by the Orillia city council, he felt that the plan in place would not be adequate to prevent hacking.

Do we have a whole internet security staff group at City Hall? We dont. We have a couple folks in IT; but we dont have folks who are specifically there to make sure all our stuff is secure.

Although, to date, no Ontario municipalities experimenting with online voting have been hacked, the potential exists, especially without adequate security measures in place. Along with these concerns, Ainsley suggested that there are also problems around the capacity of hackers.

I was reading an article the other day, there was a [sixteen-year-old] student and he hacked Microsoft and Sony, which are two giant major corporations, he said.

This scenario is not a one off. In our conversation, we discussed just a few of the major institutions and elections that had been hacked: the Pentagon, Bitcoin, the 2012 Federal NDP leadership race, and the American Democratic Party. Internet hacking can happen to any institution, no matter the security system in place.

While there could be some benefits to online voting such as access for voters and potential savings for municipalities, there are also risks of large-scale manipulation. Perhaps, as Ainsworth suggested, it is best to wait until adequate security technology for internet voting becomes available down the road. In the meantime, municipalities would be better off experimenting with other alternative voting methods to improve turnout and convenience.

See more here:
From the Desk of Jay Fallis: To internet vote, or not to internet vote - BarrieToday

Are Blockchains Key to the Future of Web Encryption? – CoinDesk

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

Encrypted websites now handle more than half the world's web traffic, but the way the keys for those connections are exchanged and verified hasn't changed much in 20 years.

The current system relies on a global network of certificate authorities (CAs) to verify the public key and the owner of each secure website. It has long been criticized for creating central points of failure. And those central points, the CAs, have actually failed in some cases.

Some think blockchains the technology that manages key exchange for the $25bn bitcoin network could be the basis for a secure alternative.

Like blockchains, CAs began as a way to facilitate connected commerce. Veteran developer Christopher Allen who helped set up the first certificate authority, VeriSign said he imagined a system with several CAs where users would pick which ones to trust.

As the system has scaled, however, it's become impractical for everyday users to actively manage their trust in different authorities. Most now rely on their browser's default settings instead. Its now the browser companies that effectively control trust, giving them huge clout within the certificate industry.

"We've got a new centrality, which is the big browser companies," said Allen.

While control over trust has centralized, the number of certificate authorities has grown. There now hundreds of authorities in countries around the world, and a failure at any one of them undermines the whole system.

The worst incident to date was the collapse of the Dutch authority DigiNotar in 2011. Hacking DigiNotar allowed attackers to spy on around 300,000 Iranian Gmail accounts, and forced a temporary shut down of many of the Dutch government's online services.

Since then, there have been dozens of cases where CAs were caught issuing unverified certificates, using substandard security, or even trying to deceive browser companies. None of these had the same effects as DigiNotar, and the industry has raised security standards many times since 2011, but there are still those who think its time to look for a long-term alternative to CAs.

One of those alternatives was outlined in a 2015 white paper, written at a workshop Allen hosted called "Rebooting Web of Trust". The paper set out goals for a decentralized public key infrastructure (dpki) to replace the current, centralized system.

It reads:

"The goal of dpki is to ensure that ... no single third-party can compromise the integrity and security of the system as as whole."

In place of the current system, where domain ownership is recorded in the DNS and key are verified by CAs, Rebooting Web of Trust envisioned a secure namespace where domain registration and the key for each domain would be recorded on a blockchain.

The Ethereum Name System (ENS) is trying to create the same kind of secure namespace for the ethereum community. It gives us a first look at the challenges and opportunities of making these ideas work in practice.

Developer Alex Van de Sande said his team often uses the analogy of a sandwich to explain how ENS is designed. The 'bread' in the ENS sandwich are two simple contracts. One stipulates that if you own the domain, you're entitled to its subdomains. The other handles payments.

Like in a sandwich, the complicated part of ENS is in the middle. Thats the contract that sets the rules for name registration. ENS wants to avoid the problem of domain squatting, which was common during the initial internet domain name boom.

Theyre also pursuing the 'principle of least surprise', the idea that people shouldnt be too surprised by who actually owns a name. It might seem like common sense that Bank of America should have first dibs on bankofamerica.eth. But Van de Sande said that designing a system to implement that principle is very challenging, maybe even impractical.

He added thatENS will take the first year after the relaunch as an opportunity to learn how to improve the registration rules. If the rules change, he said, name owners will have a choice to upgrade or surrender their names for a refund.

Van de Sande said he hopes ENS will be a model for a wider use of similar ideas, adding:

"ENS reflects the way we wish the internet would be. It doesn't mean that it's actually going to be that way."

Another way to decentralize the infrastructure behind secure online communication is to ensure that users can verify the actual information they receive, rather than trying to secure the server-client connection.

Engineer Jude Nelson, who collaborated on the 2015 "Rebooting Web of Trust" white paper, told CoinDesk this is the goal of his startup, New York-based Blockstack.

Blockstack's system, which is currently in an alpha release, allows users to record their unique name and key on the bitcoin blockchain, and then lookup another user in order to verify the information they receive.

"With Blockstack, we're trying to make it so that developers can build server-less, decentralized, applications where users own their own data," said Nelson. "There are no passwords and developers don't have to host either of them."

This could, one day, reduce the need for the website encryption altogether.

Each of these projects reflects the same overarching goal: to reduce the role of third parties and give users more control.

Allen, who has convened the Rebooting Web of Trust group every six months since 2015, said he is working towards technologies that giveusers true sovereignty.

The many strings of letters and numbers that represent individuals online today are all registered with third parties. "You're not really buying it, you're renting it. You don't have true sovereignty," said Allen.

But Allen also sees many challenges ahead. One is usability. Systems that work for technically adept users may not scale to applications where most users will rely on defaults and wont be prepared to make choices about who to trust.

Allen said:

Weve learned in technology that giving users choice often doesnt work."

Meanwhile, the centralized system is also changing. Google is in the middle of rolling out its own solution to the pitfalls of the CA system a plan called Certificate Transparency, which requires CAs to log all trusted certificates in public view.

Google said it can verify log-inclusion and the log's honesty with Merkle trees, and the system has already allowed researchers to catch some bad certificates.

Googles idea is to keep the third party, but remove the trust. And this approach may prove to be a long-term competitor to blockchain-based projects which want to get rid of both.

Encryption machineimage via Shutterstock

DomainsBlockstackBrowsersENS

Here is the original post:
Are Blockchains Key to the Future of Web Encryption? - CoinDesk

How to Enable AES Encryption on Your Router – Laptop Mag

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

Encryption is a hotly-debated topic in Washington, but an essential part of web security everywhere else. For most of us, this starts with how were connecting to the internet -- our router. Each router has multiple encryption settings, of which AES/WPA2 is the hands-down winner when it comes to keeping each of us secure. Dated technologies, like WEP, arent much better than no protection at all, and sadly some older routers are set to that by default. Firmware updates should bring you into modern times, but you may still have to know what youre looking for.

Heres how its done, at least on my router.

1. In the address bar, enter the home address for your router and press enter. For mine, its 192.168.1.1, but depending on your router it could be 192.168.0.1, or another variation. If its neither of those, a quick Google search for [router brand] home address will get you where you need to be.

2. Log in, and press OK to proceed.

3. Click Wireless settings at the top of the page -- or something similar on your router.

4. Click Basic Security Settings -- or, just security settings or something similar.

5. Under Wi-Fi Security, select WPA2. WPA2 utilizes AES encryption, which is typically plenty for most households.

6. Click Apply at the bottom.

Original post:
How to Enable AES Encryption on Your Router - Laptop Mag

Bitcoin’s appeal is at an all-time high – New York Post

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

Global stock indexes are not the only asset class making new highs on a daily basis. Cryptocurrencies specifically bitcoin are soaring to fresh levels as well.

Despite two major setbacks for bitcoin in 2017, it has soared nearly 55 percent from its year-to-date lows as Asian investors flock to the new-age currency.

Bitcoin prices are now trading at previously uncharted levels as the value of the cryptocurrency reached a high of $1,588 on CoinDesk on Friday morning.

In January the Peoples Bank of China, the countrys central bank, launched a crackdown on bitcoin, believing that citizens were using it to move wealth out of the country. Prices fell as low as $750 on Jan. 12 before recovering.

In March the cryptocurrency had a run-up on anticipation that the Securites and Exchange Commission would decide in favor of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund driven by the Winklevoss brothers. Bitcoin prices reached a high of $1,350 before the feds nixed the proposal, sending prices to a low of $891 soon afterward.

Prices began to recover as Japan officially acknowledged the use of cryptocurrencies and passed legislation allowing retailers to accept payment in digital form.

Russia and India have also loosened restrictions on cryptocurrencies, leading to wider acceptance within their borders as both countries India especially struggle with their own internal currency crises.

The SEC announced in April that it would take a second look at a bitcoin ETF by reviewing its ruling in the Winklevoss brothers application. No timetable has been released on when that may happen.

Bitcoins market cap is now north of $23 billion, which is chump change for any asset class. But with more acceptance and wider appeal, the digital currency can be divided into smaller units such as decibits, millibits and centibits to make smaller transactions possible.

Ethereum, which is the second-most prominent cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, struck a new all-time high Tuesday as well, trading at $85.

It now has a market cap of $7 billion on the strength of its acceptance in gaming circles in Asian countries.

See the article here:
Bitcoin's appeal is at an all-time high - New York Post

How Ripple is Targeting an Entirely Different Market to Bitcoin – CryptoCoinsNews

May 7, 2017 | Author: admin

Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 as an alternative network to the global financial system monopolized by centralized institutions and strictly regulated financial service providers. By providing a peer to peer protocol wherein users can send and receive transactions with the absence of intermediaries, Bitcoin essentially became the first decentralized financial platform.

Replicating or being inspired by Bitcoins structure, alternative cryptocurrencies or altcoins emerged. One of the most successful cryptocurrencies that has maintained its market cap and client base over a relatively long period of time is Ripple. It consistently has ranked in the top three altcoin, falling behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ripples vision was to provide a more efficient infrastructure for the centralized institutions and the conventional finance industry.

Ripple is significantly different to Bitcoin philosophically and structurally. If bitcoin is described as a decentralized peer to peer network developed to operate as an alternative financial network to that of the existing global financial system, Ripple can be explained as a protocol structured to serve and enhance the existing global financial system. It has partnered with leading banks and major financial institutions to settle cross-border and cross-bank transactions transparently, with strong security measures in real time.

The current global financial system operates on top of an outdated and inefficient IT infrastructure and system. For a transaction to become fully verified and settled, it could take days to weeks with a substantial fee, usually in the range of $30 to $50 per transaction. Often times, transactions initiated by banks through an international financial network such as SWIFT get lost within the system, requiring manual confirmation and a period of weeks for the transaction to be recovered and settled.

Essentially, Ripple utilizes blockchain technology and the concept of digital tokens to simplify global banking. Major banks and financial institutions are in agreement with Ripples vision and strategy and have adopted Ripples system. Most recently, CryptoCoinsNews reported that Spanish banking giant BBVA began to utilize Ripple blockchain for Spain-Mexico money transfers.

This pioneer initiative is a clear demonstration of how payment processes can be vastly improved through the implementation of emerging technologies. These improvements will benefit our clients transnationality, head of digital transformation in investment banking at BBVA stated.

However, an ambiguous component of Ripples services is the necessity of intermediaries. In an email, Ripple representative told CryptoCoinsNews that Ripple executives believe banks arent going away and that bitcoin is getting it wrong. Yet, by growth, bitcoin has evidently appealed to a wider range of users, businesses and investors as it is valued at $23.7 billion at the time of reporting. Ripples market cap is below 10 percent of bitcoins.

`An intermediary such as BBVA utilizing the Ripple network for a customer can be understood as an intermediary using another intermediary to process transactions. Thus, in the long run, one of the two intermediaries could be rendered ineffective. Either users will solely rely on the Ripple network and utilize XRP to make transactions with each other or banks will develop their own blockchain network similar to SWIFT and simply discard its partnership with Ripple.

The issue with banks developing their independent blockchain networks is the necessity of cooperation and collaboration. Hence, by relying on an existing blockchain network structured to serve financial institutions, banks can cut development costs.

Three advantages Ripple offers to its banks is speed, certainty and cost. By utilizing a decentralized blockchain in Ripple, banks can potentially see a reduction of billions of dollars in operating costs. Whether banks will remain with Ripple and work on the development of a cross-bank network or form their own blockchain network like JP Morgan is still difficult to speculate.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

Read the original:
How Ripple is Targeting an Entirely Different Market to Bitcoin - CryptoCoinsNews

Cloud Hosting

The cloud computing tidal wave – BetaNews

World’s First Quantum Computer Is Here – Wall Street Pit – Wall Street Pit

China adds a quantum computer to high-performance computing arsenal – PCWorld

The Quantum Computer Revolution Is Closer Than You May Think – National Review

China builds five qubit quantum computer sampling and will scale to 20 qubits by end of this year and could any beat … – Next Big Future

From the Desk of Jay Fallis: To internet vote, or not to internet vote – BarrieToday

Are Blockchains Key to the Future of Web Encryption? – CoinDesk

How to Enable AES Encryption on Your Router – Laptop Mag

Bitcoin’s appeal is at an all-time high – New York Post

How Ripple is Targeting an Entirely Different Market to Bitcoin – CryptoCoinsNews

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Media Sites

Pages

Site admin