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Comment The big ticket question (Score 1) 141

by quax (#44144269) Attached to: D-Wave Large-Scale Quantum Chip Validated, Says USC Team

Can it outperform classical computers?

This remains to be seen for the time being, although early benchmarking was enough to convince Google to shell out some cash.

Nevertheless, there is another set of benchmark results to be released soon, and those may spell a different picture. Unfortunately, I am not at all convinced that I can already win my bet on D-Wave with the current chip generation.

Of course 'hardliners' like Scott Aaronson maintain that quantum annealing will never get there in the first place.

At any rate a fascinating story to follow.

Comment Re:Very nice (Score 2) 136

Yesterday I got a scam call for a free resort stay if I was over the age of 28 and would provide them my credit card number.

While this particular scam is nothing particularly new, what was surprising is that the call appeared to originate from my area code. When I called the number back it went to a woman's voicemail. I'm guessing the entire thing was spoofed and she's an unknowing accomplice to this scam. Hell, they could be choosing numbers entirely at random.

Comment Re:T-mobile the one that doesn't cost a damn fortu (Score 1) 131

I have Verizon (I have had T-mobile and various rebranded AT&Ts over the years as well) and have found the Big Red to be the best overall for a few reasons:

- Coverage
- Data sharing
- Cost

I think my wife and I pay about $150 for our two lines which include unlimited voice and text with 4GB of data shared between us and our chosen devices.

AT&T was less money (about $130/month) however we had 450 anytime minutes/1000 night/weekend with rollover and no SMS plan. Being that my wife is using around 1000 SMSs a month, the cost savings from that alone is worth it.

Now, Verizon's 3G is noticeably slower than AT&T and while that doesn't matter much in the metro area where our primary residence is located as there is LTE, at our lake home (which has LTE about 500 feet outside of the cabin) we are stuck w/pokey 3G service that is comparable to the 1300/700 DSL service we get there.

For me I dropped more calls in dead zones with both T-mobile and AT&T than I have noticed w/VZW but the single biggest advantage Verizon has over any other carriers is coverage. I should NEVER, EVER, EVER have No Service show up along major interstates yet with both T-mobile and AT&T I did. I have never been w/o VZW service in the last year I've had it.

To me the $150/month is well worth it. YMMV.
Databases

Transgendered Folks Encountering Document/Database ID Hassles 814

Posted by Soulskill from the flipping-bits dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Most of us hear the equivalent of 'let me bring up your record' several times a week or month when dealing with businesses and government agencies; sometimes there's a problem, but clerks are accustomed to dealing with changes in street address, phone numbers, company affiliation, and even personal names (after marriage). But what about gender? Transgendered folks are encountering embarrassing moments when they have to explain that their gender has changed from 'M' to 'F' or vice versa. While there are many issues involved in discrimination against transgendered individuals, I have to confess that the first thing that came to my mind was the impact on database design and maintenance."
Facebook

Facebook and Microsoft Disclose Government Requests For User Data 140

Posted by Soulskill from the know-when-to-walk-away-know-when-to-run dept.
wiredmikey writes "Facebook and Microsoft say they received thousands of requests for information from U.S. authorities last year but are prohibited from listing a separate tally for security-related requests or secret court orders related to terror probes. The two companies have come under heightened scrutiny since reports leaked of a vast secret Internet surveillance program U.S. authorities insist targets only foreign terror suspects and is needed to prevent attacks. Facebook said Friday it had received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data affecting 18,000 to 19,000 accounts during the second half of last year and Microsoft said it had received 6,000 to 7,000 requests affecting 31,000 to 32,000 accounts during the same period." Meanwhile, an article at the Guardian is suggesting the government may have better targets to pursue than Edward Snowden. "[U.S. director of national intelligence James Clapper] has come out vocally to condemn Snowden as a traitor to the public interest and the country, yet a review of Booz Allen's own history suggests that the government should be investigating his former employer, rather than the whistleblower."

Comment Re:not even hacking just URL typing with fixed ID (Score 5, Interesting) 304

by garcia (#43925523) Attached to: Hacker Exposes Evidence of Widespread Grade Tampering In India

Back in late 2009 and early 2010 I was scraping jail inmate registry records for Scott and Dakota County, MN. This was simply a script which incremented the ID numbers by one several times a day and put them out into a CSV. I uploaded these to Google Docs and had Docs Widgets build simple charts based on those data for a rolling ~6 month window of inmates.

As I started looking deeper into the data I started noticing I had ages lower than 18. Odd I thought but sure enough, Scott County was including their juvenile records in the data mixed with the adults even though it wasn't shown on their public website.

I contacted the County and they fixed the bug (you can read about that here: http://www.lazylightning.org/scott-county-quickly-fixes-juvenile-jail-roster-issue) but I was still surprised at the relative lack of security for juvenile records:

Within mere minutes of my e-mail they were on the phone with me and informed me they closed the hole. After mentioning that the only way someone may have been able to retrieve a juvenile record is if they âoeguessedâ the booking number, I replied that the booking numbers are sequential and thus âoeguessingâ is as simple as incrementing by 1. After our short discussion they asked me to let them know immediately if I noticed anything else with their data and the call was ended.

It's surprising how lax security is anywhere and to the poster elsewhere in this thread that said this is what you get when you outsource to India, this particular web stuff was not performed with outsourced talent so that comment was nothing short of asinine.

Submission + - VC Funded Fusion Start-Up Set to Demonstrate Break-Even Net Gain This Year (wavewatching.net)

Submitted by quax
quax writes: If the company General Fusion succeeds in demonstrating the viability of their approach, the international ITER project will be pretty late to the party. Surprisingly this company managed to stick tightly to their development schedule in developing their reactor for Magnetized Target Fusion. This approach has never been tried at this scale, and it will be the first time to demonstrate net energy gain equivalent in this manner (the equivalent meaning, that if the pure deuterium mix in the test was replaced with one containing tritium you would get more power out than you put in).

The next big question will be if this can become commercially viable. The mechanical stresses the reactor will have to withstand are huge, so demonstrating that this can actually run continuously will be no small feat.
   

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