Pages tagged: 'Security'
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Quantum Supremacy
A few weeks ago Google announced that it was close to achieving “quantum supremacy”. Maybe the machines are about to take over. Actually, Google has just made the next stage quantum computing chip (called Bristlecone) that has 72 bits. John Martinis, who heads Google’s effort, says it’s “pretty likely” that the new chip can achieve “quantum supremacy.” But what does this mean?
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Would I Lie to You?
After his pivotal role in the war at Bletchley Park, Alan Turing was considering the almost unlimited potential of his fully programmable computer machines. He foresaw the extreme extrapolation from the crude number crunching computers of his day to the future where perhaps a machine would be appear to be of the same intelligence as a human.
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Keeping Control
One time Harvard Business Review editor and now general contrarist Nicholas Carr argues that much of today’s technology imprisons rather than liberates users. In his book, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us, he argues that the invisibility of our high-tech snares gives us the illusion of freedom.
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Revealing more than you’d Like
When you press the Like button on Facebook, you may be revealing more than you thought. The Like button was first released in 2009 and since then well over 1 trillion Likes have been registered. According to work from Cambridge University and Microsoft Research, it turns out that what people choose to “Like” on Facebook can be used to determine a whole host of personal characteristics.
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The Internet of Things Casts Shadows
With 6 billion new internet devices being rolled out in 2014 alone The Internet of Things is upon us, but how aware are we of the risks? The number of devices connected to the internet is growing about as rapidly as the total amount of data the worlds holds. To date, we have learnt to live with the security risks associated with desktop operating systems, even managed to treat our phones the same way but always felt that proprietary systems (such as electricity systems) are just more robust.
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Being Individual in a Connected World
Authentication and identification are part of the critical foundations of modern life, particularly as we connect in as individuals. Yet the vast majority of identification events are still by simple PIN or password – from credit cards to office login. The number of stronger authentications – such as using dongle devices - is much less and physical attribute (biometrics) even more so.
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How Big Should Big Data Be?
Big Data is another one of those terms that’s been over hyped, but underneath the rhetoric, there are continual advances in pulling out ever more pertinent information from masses of data. Yet, how come one of the biggest record databases in the UK (the NHS Care.data, now delayed for a further 6 months due to user concerns) has got into such a mess? Has big data got too big for it’s boots?
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