Recycled photons set fresh quantum computing record

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Laing’s team is also working towards that end. As part of the recycling technique, the researchers chained together two logic gates – a first for an optical quantum computer and an essential step in terms of hardware for building more complex devices. “To me, this achievement is more important than factoring 21, although to do so is an excellent demonstration of the technique’s power,” says Browne.

via Recycled photons set fresh quantum computing record – physics-math – 23 October 2012 – New Scientist.

Moving from love-hate to hate-hate

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Since the early 2000s, Samsung has been involved in designing of Apple’s A-range of chips as the main manufacturer. Samsung technologies contributed in the development of the A6 predecessors A5 and A5X, thanks to a broad agreement between the two companies. It now appears that the structure of the deal has been dramatically adjusted.

via Moving from love-hate to hate-hate.

As the patent war deepens, the two companies have seen a faster deterioration of their business partnership. Apple has already reduced its memory chip orders from Samsung for the iPhone 5 as it intends to widen its supply chain.

Unlike memory chips, which just read and write data, application processors control an entire computing system, therefore processor chips are more profitable.

Is Qualcomm the New AMD? Or the Next Intel?

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With the news that Qualcomm will take over the CES keynote spot previously held by Microsoft, it really became clear what a dominant player the company has become. Quietly, while no one was paying attention, it’s become the second-most important semiconductor maker in the U.S.

via Is Qualcomm the New AMD? Or the Next Intel?.

Qualcomm started life in 1985 as a maker of cellular communications semiconductors, and it hasn’t strayed far from that formula. It’s pretty much the go-to company for CDMA chips and is now taking a lead in 4G LTE as well. So why would a company that’s so vertical become Intel’s biggest competitor? Because of where the two are headed.

Tier 1 Carriers Tackle Telco SDN

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That approach tallies with the new network vision laid out by Michel’s colleague, Axel Clauberg, DT’s vice president of IP Architecture and Design, earlier this year. That vision sees SDN protocols being deployed in data centers and access networks but not in telecom operator core networks. (See DT Unveils New Network Vision.)

via Light Reading Service Provider IT – IP & Convergence – Tier 1 Carriers Tackle Telco SDN – Telecom News Analysis.

Open source software is key to transferring large amounts of data to us, quickly

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But, dig beneath the hood of this story—and the diagram included—and you’ll see another story. One that points to the key role of open source software in making this phenomenal mission work and the results available to so many, so quickly.

via Open source software is key to transferring large amounts of data to us, quickly | opensource.com.

Perhaps the most important piece of this high-demand configuration, GlusterFS is an open source, distributed file system capable of scaling to several petabytes (actually, 72 brontobites!) and handling thousands of clients. GlusterFS clusters together storage building blocks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect, aggregating disk and memory resources and managing data in a single global namespace.

Crack in Internet’s foundation of trust allows HTTPS session hijacking

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The technique exploits web sessions protected by the Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security protocols when they use one of two data-compression schemes designed to reduce network congestion or the time it takes for webpages to load. Short for Compression Ratio Info-leak Made Easy, CRIME works only when both the browser and server support TLS compression or SPDY, an open networking protocol used by both Google and Twitter. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers are all believed to be immune to the attack, but at time of writing smartphone browsers and a myriad of other applications that rely on TLS are believed to remain vulnerable.

via Crack in Internet’s foundation of trust allows HTTPS session hijacking | Ars Technica.

A side effect of compression, security experts have long known, is that it leaks clues about the encrypted contents. That means it provides a “side channel” to adversaries who have the ability to monitor the data. A research paper published in 2002 by John Kelsey looks eerily similar to CRIME, but only in retrospect.

How Google Cools Its Armada of Servers

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Here’s how the airflow works: The temperature in the data center is maintained at 80 degrees, somewhat warmer than in most data centers. That 80-degree air enters the server, inlet and passes across the components, becoming warmer as it removes the heat. Fans in the rear of the chassis guide the air into an enclosed hot aisle, which reaches 120 degrees as hot air enters from rows of racks on either side. As the hot air rises to the top of the chamber, it passes through the cooling coil and is cooled to room temperature, and then exhausted through the top of the enclosure. The flexible piping connects to the cooling coil at the top of the hot aisle and descends through an opening in the floor and runs under the raised floor.

via How Google Cools Its Armada of Servers » Data Center Knowledge.

Google’s custom servers also have a bare bones look and feel, with components exposed for easy access as they slide in and out of racks. This provides easy access for admins who need to replace components, but also avoids the cost of cosmetic trappings common to OEM servers.

Polar Mobile arms publishers with MediaEverywhere HTML5 tool

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MediaEverywhere provides publishers with an SDK based on HTML5 that allows them to create custom mobile websites in a short period of time but also re-use the work for native apps for smartphones and tablets. The SDK allows publishers to control the look of their content while easily distributing it to multiple devices in a cost-effective way.

via Polar Mobile arms publishers with MediaEverywhere HTML5 tool — Tech News and Analysis.

And he said mobile consumption is increasingly moving to the web browser. Pew reported earlier this month that 60 perecnt of tablet news users rely on their browser to get news on their tablet, compared to 23 percent that mostly use apps.

Fabbing a chip that could encode data in a twisted vortex of light

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Photons possess a number of quantum properties that can be used to encode information. You can think of photon polarization as like the rotation of a planet on its axis. In this view, the helical shape of the light wave—known as its orbital angular momentum (OAM)—is akin to the planet’s orbit around the Sun. These properties are independent of each other, and of the wavelength of light, so they can be manipulated separately. Whereas polarization occurs as a combination of two possible orientations, the OAM theoretically can have infinite values, though in practice far fewer states are available. Nevertheless, exploiting OAM greatly expands the potentially exploitable quantum states of photons we could put to use.

via Fabbing a chip that could encode data in a twisted vortex of light | Ars Technica.

The Honeynet Project

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The HoneyMap shows a real-time visualization of attacks against the Honeynet Project’s sensors deployed around the world. It leverages the internal data sharing protocol hpfeeds as its data source. Read this post to learn about the technical details and frequently asked questions. Before going into explanations, take a look at the map itself: map.honeynet.org!

via Blogs | The Honeynet Project.