It might seem like something straight from the Star Trek universe, but two new research experiments—one involving a photon and the other involving a super-conducting circuit—have successfully demonstrated the teleportation of quantum bits.
If that sounds like gobbledygook, don't worry. We got in touch with one of the researchers, physicist Andreas Wallraff, of the Quantum Device Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, to explain how his team and a team based at the University of Tokyo were able to reliably teleport quantum states from one place to another.
People have done this before but it hasn't necessarily been reliable. The new complementaryresearch, which comes out in Nature today, is reliable—and therefore may have widespread applications in computing and cryptography.
PORTLAND, OREGON — One guy is wearing his Google Glass. Another showed up in an HTML5 t-shirt. And then there’s the dude who looks like the Mad Hatter, decked out in a top hat with an enormous white flower tucked into the brim.
Click on Image to Enlarge
At first, they look like any other gaggle of tech geeks. But then you notice that one of them is Ward Cunningham, the man who invented the wiki, the tech that underpins Wikipedia. And there’s Kevin Marks, the former vice president of web services at British Telecom. Oh, and don’t miss Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of the seminal blogging site LiveJournal and, more recently, a coder who works in the engine room of Google’s online empire.
Packed into a small conference room, this rag-tag band of software developers has an outsized digital pedigree, and they have a mission to match. They hope to jailbreak the internet.
If You Have the Cojones to Rob The Feds, the Feds Have The Money to Give You – Lots of It
“A Maryland woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges related to setting up at least 15 false businesses in six states that received government contracts despite often being registered to people who did not exist. The businesses subcontracted all the work to other companies, then took the federal dollars without paying the companies doing the work. Larayne Whitehead, 34, of Clinton, Md., agreed to forfeit $2.4 million in illegal proceeds and a silver Audi.
Bradley Manning did everything but wear a sign saying “Timebomb waiting to explode!
Michael Farrell
Veterans Today, 14 August 2013
EXTRACT
The subject of the email was “My problem.”“I’ve had signs of it for a very long time,” Bradley Manning wrote. “It caused conditions within my family. I thought a career in the military would get rid of it. … But it’s not going away, it’s haunted me more and more as I get older.”There was a photograph attached. Sitting in a car, looking anguished, Manning stares into the camera’s lens. He is wearing a blonde wig and makeup. –Matt Sledge, the Huffington Post, 8-13-2013
In my post on July 31, I argued that the chain of command was largely responsible for the entire debacle ending in the release of documents. It appears based on testimony that not only was I right, it was worse than I thought. Those of us who were in leadership roles during that era and did not want to engage in witch hunts found the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy not that easy to enforce. This was a problem with a lot of issues by the way — people engaging in private behavior that the overall society was willing to accept, but that violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When a soldier came in to talk to me for some “personal problem,” I didn’t always begin with reading them their rights but I had the card handy just in case. But, while it did not happen, I knew exactly what I would do if someone came in and announced that they were gay–I’d make certain that they knew that by telling me they were in fact asking to be discharged, and then I’d be on the phone to the CSM and the legal clerk to start the paperwork. Nothing personal…I didn’t care, but the rules were pretty straightforward. And, in my leadership roles, I wasn’t dealing with a lot of soldiers who had clearances above Secret.
Create Interactive Maps to Explore the Connections Between the Rich and Powerful with Muckety
A wonderful, cool and richly educational tool, and for free. The rich and powerful don't exploit, manipulate and strip the economy all by themselves. They do so with others, benefiting themselves by networking with others who are like themselves in various ways.This tool lets you see who is on their “team”! You can also explore connections between organizations, too.
“Welcome to Muckety, where interactive maps enable you to explore relationships of the rich, powerful and connected. We list top government and political figures, as well as board members of Fortune 1000 companies, major nonprofits and influential colleges. We show lobbyists, political contributors, Hollywood celebs and pop culture icons. Occasionally, we even map fictional characters such as Harry Potter.”
One of East Germany's top spies was actually an American soldier. Jeff Carney defected to the Communist state in 1983 and fed the notorious Stasi with reams of valuable information. He has now written a book about his experiences.
Click on Image to Enlarge – The US surveillance post at Berlin-Marienfelde where Carney worked as a US soldier and East German spy.
EXTRACT
Later, after defecting to East Germany, Carney received the gold “Brotherhood in Arms Medal” from Stasi head Erich Mielke. Even later, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a US court sentenced Carney to 20 years in Fort Leavenworth, a military prison in Kansas. Carney, code-named “Kid,” was one of a pair of top agents the Stasi had used to infiltrate the US military in West Berlin. The Americans estimated the damage that the “Kid” had caused by betraying secrets over a period of more than two years at $14.5 billion (€10.9 billion).
In a campaign to improve its image abroad, the Israeli government plans to provide scholarships to hundreds of students at its seven universities in exchange for their making pro-Israel Facebook posts and tweets to foreign audiences.
The students making the posts will not reveal online that they are funded by the Israeli government, according to correspondence about the plan revealed in the Haaretz newspaper.
