Month: February 2019

An image of IBM's quantum computer showing five qubits. (credit: IBM)

If I were to compare quantum computing to classical computing right now, I would say that we are somewhere beyond the point where Babbage and Lovelace left off but have not yet reached the point where someone has made a Bomba or an ENIAC. We are currently in the phase of trying to figure out what technology is best for implementing a quantum computer. And that choice is not straightforward.

One technology choice for quantum computing is the trapped ion. The challenge is to get as many ions as possible under our control in a trap. Typically, this means about ten ions, but we need more for useful computations. That makes a report of cooling a 2D crystal of nearly 200 ions down to nearly the lowest temperature possible a big step forward. 

Floating checkerboard of ions

An ion, for our purposes, is an atom with an electron removed. Because of the missing electron, each ion has a positive charge, so ions repel each other. Likewise, the positive charge means that they can be fenced in with electric and magnetic fields. When ion traps are constructed just right, the ions self-organize into crystals—ions spaced at regular intervals from each other. In quantum computing, these crystals are limited to 1D—a string of evenly spaced ions.

Enlarge / US Cyber Command, co-located with the NSA at Fort Meade, reportedly launched attacks against members of a Russian disinformation operation ahead of last November's mid-term primaries, according to a Washington Post report. (credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

In October of 2018, US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) undertook a campaign to defuse information operations by a Russian operation identified in Justice Department filings as "Project Lakhta" seeking to influence or disrupt elections in the US. As Ars reported at the time, the measures being taken by USCYBERCOM—the military's joint network-defense command, based at Fort Meade, Maryland—included identifying, tracking the activities of, and directly messaging individuals in Russia involved in disinformation operations. But a February 26 report by The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima indicates that USCYBERCOM's efforts went even further—including an attack on the Internet Research Agency, the organization at the heart of alleged Russian disinformation operations that "basically took the IRA offline," according to an unnamed US official.

The operation was authorized under new guidelines set by President Donald Trump in September in a classified version of his executive order on cybersecurity. That policy move was crafted under the guidance of National Security Advisor John Bolton—who took over direct responsibility for White House cyber policy after the departure of former Cybersecurity Coordinator Rob Joyce and the elimination of that position from the National Security Council. Under Bolton's direction, as Bolton himself said in a press call Ars attended in September 2018, previous restrictions placed on the use of offensive network and computer operations set by the Obama administration were lifted. "Our presidential directive effectively reversed those restraints, effectively enabling offensive cyber operations through the relevant departments,” Bolton said at the time.

It all depends what the definition of “attack” is

If the information shared with The Washington Post is true, this would indicate October's operations were a significant escalation in US operations against Russia—targeting a private organization that, while operating allegedly in concert with Russian government goals, is not directly connected to the Russian federal government itself. It's not clear whether the attack targeted the IRA's infrastructure in St. Petersburg or if it targeted the devices of individuals within the organization.

Enlarge / Preview releases of Windows have a green screen of death instead of a blue one so they can be easily distinguished. (credit: Chris123NT)

The Windows 10 Insider Preview Slow Ring—the beta track that's meant to receive only those builds that are free from any known serious problems—hasn't received an update for months. While the fast ring is currently testing previews of the April 2019 release, codenamed 19H1, and the even-faster skip-ahead ring is testing previews not of the October 2019 release, 19H2, but of the April 2020 release, 20H1, the Slow Ring is yet to receive a single 19H1 build.

This has prompted some concern among insiders that perhaps the ring has been forgotten about, and it has even caused a few complaints from companies that are using the Windows Insider for Business program to validate new Windows releases before their launch. Without Slow Ring builds to test, there's nothing to validate, meaning that they'll have to delay deployment of 19H1 once it ships.

(1/2)Many of you are asking why we haven't released a #SlowRing flight in a while. We have a GSOD that's caused by a very common scenario around gaming anti-cheat codes. Unfortunately the fix is in the hands of our 3rd party partner company that we're working with them on...

— Dona Sarkar (@donasarkar) February 25, 2019

(2/2) Looking at our #SlowRing population, MANY of you play these games so your machines would be very difficult to use--we are committed to releasing Slow builds that are high quality so this is why we're holding the build

— Dona Sarkar (@donasarkar) February 25, 2019

Microsoft's Dona Sarkar, chief of the Windows Insider program, explained yesterday what the problem is, and in many ways it's a throwback to Windows' past, before the days of DEP and ASLR and PatchGuard and all the other measures Microsoft has implemented to harden Windows against malicious software: the build is crashing when some unspecified common anti-cheat software is used. Sarkar's tweet says that the software causes a GSOD, for Green Screen of Death; the traditional and disappointingly familiar Blue Screen of Death, denoting that Windows has suffered a fatal error, is colored green for preview releases so they can be distinguished at a glance from crashes of stable builds.

Enlarge / It's a safe bet that IBM CEO Ginni Rometty did not personally review the intern application form. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

IBM was forced to apologize after drop-down menus on an American recruiting site asked applicants to identify themselves with several racially insensitive terms: "yellow," "mulatto," and "coloured." Unsurprisingly, this sparked outrage on Twitter. A video is available here.

It seems pretty clear what happened here. The form actually had two different menus that asked "Please state your ethnic group"—which is strange on its own. One of the menus asked applicants to choose from options including "White," "Black," "Yellow," "Mulato," and "Not a Brazil National." The other included "Afrian," "Coloured," and "Not a South African National."

The first menu seems to be a clumsy translation of Brazilian racial categories. The Brazilian census uses the Portuguese word "amarelo" (yellow) to describe Brazilians of Asian descent. The census also has an official category for "pardos"—Brazilians of mixed race.