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CFOs have discovered the big stick of cloud computing – InfoWorld

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

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Guess what? Its not CIO or other leaders who are calling in the cloud consultants these days. Its the CFOs who are picking up the phone.

Thats logical if you think about it. CFOs are charged with keeping the company financially healthy. They are not happy about most IT expenses, and they have a deep-seated belief that IT is spending more money than it needs to. So, the concept of cloud computing seems to be a hammer that the CFO can use to beat IT into being much more efficient.

Although CIOs love to complain about the CFOs constant harping over expenses, the reality is that IT got its way for a long time. Indeed, many CEOs have confided in me that they felt that their IT shop was holding them hostage. Ive heard stories about IT stopping mergers due to that amount of work needed to integrate the systems. And about building new data centers about every five years to deal with the growing need for data storage that reduces earnings per share, and causes CEOs some tense times at shareholder meetings.

IT is of course not evil far from it. Most are moving in directions that they truly believe in. However, although were seeing progress, its still hard for many IT organizations to consider concepts such as cloud computing that reduces their span of control.

Enter the CFO. CFOs are the ultimate objective party because that they dont understand anything about IT and so dont have a dog in the technology hunt. They just want to spend less money so the company can make more. They dont really care if its cloud computing or voodoo.

The CFOs read technology vision as dollars and cents, not as span of controls They are focused on doing things as efficiently as possible, so the business can do what the business needs to do: return shareholder equality.

As a result, many IT organizations are getting pushed to the cloud by the CFO, and to a lesser extent by the CEO or COO. That reality is likely to cause some political turmoil; in fact, Ive been in the middle of a few such fights in the last few years.

Whoever is going to do whats best for the business is always who I will listen to. I dont care who they are. Neither should you.

David S. Linthicum is a consultant at Cloud Technology Partners and an internationally recognized industry expert and thought leader. Dave has authored 13 books on computing and also writes regularly for HPE Software's TechBeacon site.

How to approach cloud computing and cyber security in 2017 – Information Age

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

The adoption of cloud computing has been on the up since as far back as 2008, when a survey conducted by the Pew Research Institute found that cloud services were used by nearly 69% of Americans. Since then, the industry has experienced hyper-growth and exceeded the already vast predictions of how big it would become.

IDC predicts that the cloud computing market in 2017 will be worth $107 billion and, according to Gartner, by 2020 a corporate no-cloud policy will be as unusual as a no-internet policy would be today. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine an organisation in 2017 that did not use webmail, file sharing and storage, and data backup.

As the use of cloud computing spreads so does awareness of the associated risks. At the time of writing, there have been 456 data breaches worldwide this year according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). The ITRC also noted a 40% increase in data breaches in 2016 compared to the previous year. Yet, despite the well-documented cases of data breaches, organisations continue to invest in and adopt cloud computing services because the benefits usually outweigh the risks.

To understand why the growth of cloud computing has continued in the face of high-profile data breaches, look first to what it can offer an organisation.

>See also: Building trust in cloud security is crucial to UKs digital future

Cloud computing is a virtual environment that can adapt to meet user needs. It is not constrained by physical limits, and is easily scalable making it an obvious choice for start-ups. Cloud computing makes state-of-the-art capability available to anyone with an internet connection and a browser, reducing hardware and IT personnel costs.

Cloud services and software applications are managed and upgraded off-site by the provider, meaning organisations can access technology they would not have been able to afford to install and manage on their own. The popularity of the cloud essentially comes down to its provision of advanced, next-generation IT resources in an environment that is cheaper and more scalable than local networks.

The risks involved with cloud computing are mostly security-based. Clouds are often made up of multiple entities, which means that no configuration can be more secure than its weakest link. The link between separate entities means that attacks to multiple sites can occur simultaneously. When cloud providers do not employ adequate cyber security measures, those clouds become a target for cybercriminals.

Yet, its not all bad news. A user survey conducted by one cloud service provider found that concerns about security fell to 25% compared to 29% last year. And as more becomes known about security risks so too does our knowledge around what organisations can do to protect themselves.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) released its Treacherous Twelve in March 2016 detailing the top 12 threats to cloud security based on responses from their members. At the top of this list was data breaches.

Any leak or exposure of sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, social security and health records constitutes a data breach. The organisation, and not the cloud service provider, is ultimately accountable for keeping their data secure.

When a data breach does occur, a company could be fined or face criminal changes, regardless of whether it was intentional or not. Even though cloud service providers will deploy a high level of security measures, the CSA advises organisations to implement a multifactor authentication and encryption system on the user end to protect against data breaches. This could involve single-use passwords, smartcards, or phone-based authentication.

These multifactor authentication processes can also work to prevent the occurrence of compromised credentials, which can expose an organisation to a data breach. Commonly, data breaches and cyber security attacks rely on lax security systems like predictable passwords and poor certificate management.

Allocating permissions within an organisation is another area where credentials could be compromised if they are misallocated or not removed when a user leaves or changes roles. As well as multifactor authentication, companies should prohibit the sharing of account credentials and ensure permissions are allocated or removed as soon as is necessary.

Organisations can also increase their chances of avoiding a data breach by implementing proper training. Innocent mistakes can often look like deliberately harmful insider activity. Would your data administrators ever unintentionally copy sensitive customer information over to a publicly accessible server? The only way to be truly confident in a workforce and prevent mistakes happening in the cloud is to implement correct training and management.

While the cloud may differ to local networks in many ways, its data centres remain just as susceptible to damage or destruction by natural disasters. To avoid losing data to fires and floods, distribute data and applications across more than one zone. Implement appropriate data backup procedures, and adopt best practices in business continuity and disaster recovery.

Consider using off-site storage for data that, if lost, would result in its own kind of disaster. As the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) start date approaches, protecting your data is more important than ever. GDPR sees both data destruction and corruptions as serious breaches.

>See also: What to do when it comes to cloud security?

It would be unwise and certainly a bad business decision for an organisation to not take advantage of the technological advances made by the cloud. More than that, however, cloud computing services and applications also support growth in a way that traditional IT hardware cannot. Whether it is a start-up with a handful of staff, or a multinational corporation with a headcount of thousands, the cloud continues to be the way of the future.

Over the next years and decades, the regulations and laws around data in the cloud will come into maturity. Like many times in the past, governments are moving slower than the technology when it comes to implementing policies and law. Decisions made in the courts will instead set the precedent of who is ultimately responsible for the security of information stored within the cloud. In the meantime, organisations around the world can focus on self-regulation as they tackle cyber security in the cloud.

Sourced from Dean Sappey, president and co-founder, DocsCorp

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How to approach cloud computing and cyber security in 2017 - Information Age

Meet The Cloud Wars Top 10: The World’s Most-Powerful Cloud-Computing Vendors – Forbes

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Forbes

Meet The Cloud Wars Top 10: The World's Most-Powerful Cloud-Computing Vendors
Forbes
(Note: After an award-winning career in the media business covering the tech industry, Bob Evans was VP of Strategic Communications at SAP in 2011, and Chief Communications Officer at Oracle from 2012 to 2016. He now runs his own firm, Evans Strategic ...

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Meet The Cloud Wars Top 10: The World's Most-Powerful Cloud-Computing Vendors - Forbes

Belfast IT firm celebrates cloud computing success in 57 countries … – Belfast Telegraph

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Belfast IT firm celebrates cloud computing success in 57 countries

BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

A Belfast-based IT firm has said it has grown its team in Northern Ireland as its software customer numbers hit six million.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/news/belfast-it-firm-celebrates-cloud-computing-success-in-57-countries-35790730.html

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article35792149.ece/3730e/AUTOCROP/h342/lSkehelAwar.jpg

A Belfast-based IT firm has said it has grown its team in Northern Ireland as its software customer numbers hit six million.

CloudMigrator365, which was founded by Antrim man Darren Mawhinney, offers cloud migration services and software to customers across the globe.

The company has said it has now doubled its sales and tripled its headcount in Belfast over the last year.

It added it has "successfully migrated over six million people to the cloud in 57 countries".

The business helps companies migrate their email and data across to Microsoft Office 365 cloud.

It is expanding its workforce and global partnership network to support this growth, and is "continuing to scale its operations including recruiting for a number of new positions".

Mr Mawhinney said: "The international response to CloudMigrator365 has been phenomenal.

"From our base in Belfast we have so far helped companies in 57 countries to migrate while ensuring the safety and sovereignty of their data.

"We are delighted to be working with world-class organisations including LinkedIn, YMCA and the University of Bristol.

"We are currently recruiting a number of new positions in response to increasing demand from companies such as these, who are keen to invest in a simple, secure and cost-effective cloud migration solution.

"I'm extremely proud this is being developed and delivered in Northern Ireland, where we have been able to build a highly skilled global technology team alongside support from Invest NI, which has made a difference as we continue to significantly scale our operations."

And Steve Harper, Invest NI's executive director of international business, said: "Having benefited from Invest NI employment and trade support, CloudMigrator365 has been able to capitalise on new market opportunities and growing sales.

"Our employment support is enabling the company to scale its business to support an increase in productivity and export sales," he added.

Last year, welcoming the new Belfast jobs, former Economy Minister Simon Hamilton said that the firm was a "leader in its field".

Belfast Telegraph

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Belfast IT firm celebrates cloud computing success in 57 countries ... - Belfast Telegraph

OpenText buys cloud computing firm for US$103 million – TheRecord.com

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

TheRecord.com

OpenText buys cloud computing firm for US$103 million
TheRecord.com
WATERLOO OpenText is buying a U.S. cloud computing company for US$103 million. The deal for Covisint Corp., announced Monday after the markets closed, is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year pending approvals by regulators ...

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OpenText buys cloud computing firm for US$103 million - TheRecord.com

A deeper dive into cloud security as a service: Advantages and issues – Cloud Tech

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

In a recent article which focused on cloud security I presented a comparison between security-as-a-service and traditional style security tooling in the cloud. This installment is a deeper dive into the security as a service (SECaaS) paradigm.

It would seem to me that a natural outgrowth of the cloud computing and 'everything as a service' paradigm that the technology world is undergoing, would be that the tools and services we use to manage and secure our cloud environments also move into an as a service mode.

In much the way one would expect, SECaaS works under the principle of a small agent controlled from an external service provider. It is not so different conceptually from controlling a number of firewalls (virtual or physical) from an external management console.

Heres how it works. A security administrator sets the policy for the service in the SECaaS provider cloud, using online management tools, and sets what policy or policies applies to a group of VMs classified by any number of criteria.

Then, the SECaaS services governs the security activity within and around the VM via a lightweight, generic, agent installed within the VM. When a new VM is created out of a template the agent is included in the image.

Finally, the agent executes various security functions according to the direction/policy communicated from within the providers cloud environment.

For example, the security administrator creates a segmentation policy that all webserver VMs will only accept traffic on ports 80 and 443. The administrator creates a policy in the SECaaS cloud which is transmitted to the agents on all webserver VMs in the environment. The agent then acts to block and/or allow traffic as per this and other policies that apply to this type of VM.

The advantages of using a SECaaS solution include:

As more organisations continue to adopt and move to the public cloud it becomes even more critical to secure those environments, applications and services. SECaaS providers continue to enhance their offerings and continue to add specific security services to their portfolios. As SECaaS matures it becomes an even more viable option for securing enterprise public and hybrid cloud deployments.

Read more: Cloud security best practice: Security as a service or cloud security tooling?

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A deeper dive into cloud security as a service: Advantages and issues - Cloud Tech

Trends In Cloud Computing – Business Solutions Magazine

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

When CompTIA completed its previous research into the cloud market, there was a sense that the initial stage of cloud adoption was complete. The vast majority of businesses claimed to be using cloud computing in one form or another, and discussions around cloud were turning towards architectural transformation rather than initial migrations. CompTIAs study found that both end users and channel firms had moved past uncertainty around cloud offerings and were embracing the concept as a primary model for building infrastructure and executing IT operations.

Analysis of the current market reveals a new aspect of the second stage in cloud adoption. Many of the macro trends seen before are still in place, but the pace of progress appears to have slowed. In some cases, it even appears to have taken a step backwards. What accounts for this phenomenon? Why does it seem like attitudes towards cloud have cooled, even though anecdotal evidence points to the topic being as hot as ever?

In a word: refinement. CompTIAs previous study noted that some degree of confusion was still present in the cloud market. Data around deployment models and vendor awareness suggested that cloud- washing had affected perceptions around true cloud solutions. At the time, this was not a major impediment. The study explained that ultimately, end users will choose the systems that closest meet their needs for function and cost. Overlooking individual characteristics may lead to a competitive disadvantage, but this is a long-term risk as many companies are still gaining familiarity with virtualization or hosted models.

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Trends In Cloud Computing - Business Solutions Magazine

Quantum Computing Market Forecast 2017-2022 | Market …

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

The quantum computing processor, a physical device enabling the principle of quantum computing, is still rather a theoretical concept than a ready-to-implement engineering solution. Yet this notion has been broken recently by D-Waves announcement of shipping the first commercially available quantum computer model D-Wave 2000Q. IBM is also launching a new quantum computing division IBM Q, a move that might be a turning point in commercialization of quantum computing technology. IBM has pioneered quantum computing in the cloud with API enabling apps mostly for research purposes. We expect vigorous development of the cloud market segment to continue at double digit rate.

The quantum computing market is projected to surpass $5 Billion through 2020.

Despite technology advances the quantum computing market is still fledgling. At the same time this rapidly evolving market is one of the most active R&D fields, attracting substantial government funding that supports research groups at internationally leading academic institutions, national laboratories, and major industrial-research centers. The governments are the major driving force behind investments in quantum computing R&D, fiercely competing for what is perceived as the most promising technology of the 21st century. The worlds largest government IT/Defense contractors follow the government suit.

So, what is the rationale for quantum computing market?

a. National Security Considerations:

b. National Economy Considerations:

The report covers the quantum computing R&D, products, technologies and services as well as government, corporate and venture capital investments in quantum computing.

The report provides detailed year-by-year (2017 2022) forecasts for the following quantum computing (QC) market segments:

Quantum Computing Market Forecast 2017-2022, Tabular Analysis, May 2017, Pages: 23, Figures: 13, Tables: 6, Single User Price: $5,950.00 Reports are delivered in PDF format within 24 hours. Analysis provides quantitative market research information in a concise tabular format. The tables/charts present a focused snapshot of market dynamics.

2CheckOut.com Inc. (Ohio, USA) is an authorized retailer for goods and services provided by Market Research Media Ltd.

Quantum Computing Market Forecast 2017-2022, Tabular Analysis, May 2017, Pages: 23, Figures: 13, Tables: 6, Global Site License: $9,950.00 Reports are delivered in PDF format within 24 hours. Analysis provides quantitative market research information in a concise tabular format. The tables/charts present a focused snapshot of market dynamics.

2CheckOut.com Inc. (Ohio, USA) is an authorized retailer for goods and services provided by Market Research Media Ltd.

Table of Contents

1. Market Report Scope & Methodology 1.1. Scope 1.2. Research Methodology

2. Executive Summary

3. Quantum Computing Market in Figures 2017-2022 3.1. Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022 3.2. Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022 by Technology Segments 3.3. Quantum Computing in the Cloud Market 2017-2022 3.4. Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022 by Country

List of Figures Fig. 1- Quantum Computing Market Forecast 2017-2022, $Mln Fig. 2- Quantum Computing Market: Growth Rates 2017-2022 by Technology Segments, CAGR % Fig. 3- Cumulative Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022, Market Share by Technology Segments, % Fig. 4- Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022 by Technology Segments, $Mln Fig. 5- Quantum Computing Market Dynamics 2017-2022: Market Share by Technology Segments, % Fig. 6- Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022: Quantum Cryptography, $Mln Fig. 7- Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022: Physical QC Device, $Mln Fig. 8- Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022: QC Simulation, $Mln Fig. 9- Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022: QC Programming Infrastructure, $Mln Fig. 10- Quantum Computing in the Cloud Market 2017-2022, $Mln Fig. 11- Cumulative Quantum Market 2017-2022, market share by country, % Fig. 12- Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022 by Country, $Mln Fig. 13- Quantum Computing Market Dynamics 2017-2022: Market Share by Country, %

List of Tables Table 1 The Rationale for Quantum Computing Market Table 2 Quantum Computing Approaches by Physical Principle Table 3 Quantum Computing Market Forecast 2017-2022, $Mln Table 4 Global Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022 by Technology Segments, $Mln Table 5 Quantum Computing in the Cloud Market 2017-2022, $Mln Table 6 Quantum Computing Market 2017-2022 by Top 8 Countries, $Mln

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Quantum Computing Market Forecast 2017-2022 | Market ...

Research collaborative pursues advanced quantum computing – Phys.Org

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

May 31, 2017 by Steve Tally Purdue University and Microsoft Corp. have signed a five-year agreement to develop a useable quantum computer. Purdue is one of four international universities in the collaboration.Michael Manfra, Purdue University's Bill and Dee O'Brien Chair Professor of Physics and Astronomy, professor of materials engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering, will lead the effort at Purdue to build a robust and scalable quantum computer by producing what scientists call a "topological qubit." Credit: Purdue University photo/Rebecca Wilcox

"If this project is successful it will cause a revolution in computing."

That's the forecast of Michael Manfra, Purdue University's Bill and Dee O'Brien Chair Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Professor of Materials Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, on a new long-term enhanced collaboration between Purdue and Microsoft Corp. to build a robust and scalable quantum computer by producing what scientists call a "topological qubit."

Purdue President Mitch Daniels noted that Purdue was home to the first computer science department in the United States, and says this partnership and Manfra's work places the university at the forefront of quantum computing.

"Someday quantum computing will move from the laboratory to actual daily use, and when it does, it will signal another explosion of computing power like that brought about by the silicon chip," Daniels says. "It's thrilling to imagine Purdue at the center of this next leap forward."

In the computers that we currently use every day, information is encoded in an either/or binary system of bits, what are commonly thought of as 1s and 0s. These computers are based on silicon transistors, which, like a light switch, can only be in either an on or off position.

With quantum computers, information is encoded in qubits, which are quantum units of information. With a qubit, however, this physical state isn't just 0 or 1, but can also be a linear combination of 0 and 1. Because of a strange phenomenon of quantum mechanics called "superposition," a qubit can be in both states at the same time.

This characteristic is essential to quantum computation's potential power, allowing for solutions to problems that are intractable using classical architectures.

Advocates of quantum computing believe this never-before-seen technology will create a new global "quantum economy."

The team assembled by Microsoft will work on a type of quantum computer that is expected to be especially robust against interference from its surroundings, a situation known in quantum computing as "decoherence." The "scalable topological quantum computer" is theoretically more stable and less error-prone.

"One of the challenges in quantum computing is that the qubits interact with their environment and lose their quantum information before computations can be completed," Manfra says. "Topological quantum computing utilizes qubits that store information "non-locally" and the outside noise sources have less effect on the qubit, so we expect it to be more robust."

Manfra says that the most exciting challenge associated with building a topological quantum computer is that the Microsoft team must simultaneously solve problems of materials science, condensed matter physics, electrical engineering and computer architecture.

"This is why Microsoft has assembled such a diverse set of talented people to tackle this large-scale problem," Manfra says. "No one person or group can be expert in all aspects."

Purdue and Microsoft entered into an agreement in April 2016 that extends their collaboration on quantum computing research, effectively establishing "Station Q Purdue," one of the "Station Q" experimental research sites that work closely with two "Station Q" theory sites.

The new, multi-year agreement extends that collaboration, and includes Microsoft employees being embedded in Manfra's research team at Purdue.

Manfra's group at Station Q Purdue will collaborate with Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft team members, as well as a global experimental group established by Microsoft including experimental groups at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, TU Delft in the Netherlands, and the University of Sydney, Australia. They are also coupled to the theorists at Microsoft Station Q in Santa Barbara. All groups are working together to solve quantum computing's biggest challenges.

"What's exciting is that we're doing the science and engineering hand-in-hand, at the same time," Manfra says. "We are lucky to be part of this truly amazing global team."

Mathematician and Fields Medal recipient Michael Freedman leads Microsoft's Station Q in Santa Barbara working on quantum computing.

"There is another computing planet out there, and we, collectively, are going to land on it. It really is like the old days of physical exploration and much more interesting than locking oneself in a bottle and traveling through space. We will find an amazing unseen world once we have general purpose programmable quantum computers," Freedman says. "Michael Manfra and Purdue University will be a key collaborator on this journey. I'm not interested in factoring numbers, but solving chemistry and materials science problems, and most ambitiously machine intelligence. Curiously, we need great materials science and transport physics Mike Manfra's work to build the systems we will use to do quantum computing and, thus, to usher in the next era of materials science."

Purdue's role in the project will be to grow and study ultra-pure semiconductors and hybrid systems of semiconductors and superconductors that may form the physical platform upon which a quantum computer is built. Manfra's group has expertise in a technique called molecular beam epitaxy, and this technique will be used to build low-dimensional electron systems that form the basis for quantum bits, or qubits.

The work at Purdue will be done in the Birck Nanotechnology Center in the university's Discovery Park, as well as in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The Birck facility houses the multi-chamber molecular beam epitaxy system, in which three fabrication chambers are connected under ultra-high vacuum. It also contains clean-room fabrication and necessary materials characterization tools. Laboratories for low-temperature measurement of the materials electronic properties will be conducted in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Suresh Garimella, executive vice president for research and partnerships, and Purdue's Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, says the tools and laboratories found in Discovery Park have enabled Purdue to become a world leader in several areas.

"Combining these world-leading facilities with our incredibly talented and knowledgeable faculty, such as Professor Manfra, has placed Purdue at the forefront of research and development of nanotechnology, nanoelectronics, next-generation silicon transistor-based electronics, and quantum computing. To have Purdue contribute to the construction of the world's first quantum computer is be a dream come true for us," he says.

Explore further: The mystery of quantum computers

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What does the future hold for computing? Experts at the Networked Quantum Information Technologies Hub (NQIT), based at Oxford University, believe our next great technological leap lies in the development of quantum computing.

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Research collaborative pursues advanced quantum computing - Phys.Org

Telstra just wants a quantum computer to offer as-a-service – ZDNet

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Due to the changes needed to algorithms and computational thinking, Telstra chief scientist Hugh Bradlow believes the first commercial users of quantum computers will need some help adjusting -- and the Australian incumbent telco will be there to offer that help at a price.

"I can assure you they are not going to walk in on day one and know how to use these things," Bradlow said on Wednesday evening.

"We want to be able to offer it as-a-service to them ... they will need a lot of hand holding, and they are not going to run the equipment themselves, it's complicated."

Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) are two of the companies backing the work of a team at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) that is looking to develop quantum computing in silicon.

At the end of 2015, both companies contributed AU$10 million over five years to UNSW.

Despite racing against far greater funded rivals, head of UNSW's quantum effort professor Michelle Simmons said she is happy with the funding the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology has received.

"At the moment, you have to prove you have the best hardware of anything out there to know whether you are going to go further or not," Simmons said. "I guess one of the things we've been very much driven by is milestone-based research.

"Can we actually develop the qubits, qubit by qubit, and prove that they are better than other qubits that out there? And so if you have lots of money in the beginning, and you are not doing that systematic thorough approach, it's actually not that helpful to you. You have to do it, proving it along the way."

Simmons said her team is currently looking at producing a 10-qubit system by the end of the decade, and, if successful, will be looking to move up to 100 qubits.

In October last year, the UNSW team announced that they had created a new qubit that remains in a stable superposition for 10 times longer than previously achieved.

A year earlier, the team built the first 2-qubit logic gate in silicon.

"The prototype chip we want to make within five years is a pretty shrinkable manufacturing process, and it will be able to perform a variety of calculations; we hope it will be able to potentially solve the problem that currently can't be solved on an existing computer," Andrew Dzurak, scientia professor at the university, said at the time.

"That particular type of problem may not be the sort of problem that is going to excite many commercial people in the first instance, but it will be an important principal."

Even though UNSW is at the frontier of quantum computing, however, Bradlow said Telstra just wants to get its hands on one.

"We are agnostic at the end of the day; we just want a quantum computer," he said. "We do hope Michelle's team wins ... we've gone and put our money on it because we think it's got the best odds, so it's not just a random bet, but we are obviously keeping across anything that is out there.

"Over the last year and a half, I've probably visited every major group in the world, and they all have very different views and by seeing multiple views you get a much better perspective.

"So it's important to keep across everything."

For its part, CBA is preparing for a quantum future by using a quantum computing simulator from QxBranch.

"The difference between the emulator of a quantum computer and the real hardware is that we run the simulator on classical computers, so we don't get the benefit of the speed up that you get from quantum, but we can simulate its behaviour and some of the broad characteristics of what the eventual hardware will do," QxBranch CEO Michael Brett told ZDNet in April.

"What we provide is the ability for people to explore and validate the applications of quantum computing so that as soon as the hardware is ready, they'll be able to apply those applications and get the benefit immediately of the unique advantages of quantum computing."

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Telstra just wants a quantum computer to offer as-a-service - ZDNet

Team develops first blockchain that can’t be hacked by quantum computer – Siliconrepublic.com

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

It was a busy week for IoT technologies, with Russia preparing its networks for quantum computer hacks through blockchain.

Earlier this week, Irish forestry organisation Coillte revealed its latest effort to get into the internet of trees space following a 1.2m deal with the European Space Agency to roll out a tree growth analytics system, including a unique tree sensor device.

When operational, the sensors will create a kind of mesh network that maps out a digital forest. The resulting data will be transmitted via satellite to provide real-time analytics for forest managers.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean, Android co-founder Andy Rubin was discussingthe prevalence of smart home assistants on the market, and how they are creating a disjointed ecosystem.

Rubin wasspeakingas part of thelaunch of Androids new Essential Home device and a new open source, smart assistant operating system called Ambient OS.

All of these [companies] have ecosystem envy and want to create their own ecosystem, Rubin said.

But consumers dont want just Samsung stuff in their house. They want diversity.

The fields of blockchain and quantum computing are fascinating and complex in their own regard, but new research from Russia claims that a merger between the two could be very interesting.

According to the International Business Times, a team from the Russian Quantum Center in Moscow has developed quantum blockchain technology that would prevent any hacker from accessing connections, despite thecomputing technology still being experimental.

As has been explained before, blockchain is the technology that makes a transaction of currency or information traceable and transparent to both parties and, by its nature, is supposed to be incredibly secure.

However, when quantum computers enter the mainstream, this might not be the case as their incredible processing power would be able to crack any encryption.

Parties that communicate via a quantum channel can be completely sure that they are talking to each other, not anybody else, said Alexander Lvovsky, group lead ofthe research.

This is the main idea. Then we had to reinvent the entire blockchain architecture to fit our new authentication technology, thereby making this architecture immune to quantum computer attacks.

Earlier this week (29 May), Enterprise Ireland held a trade mission in Canada with a focus on IoT, led by Minister Sean Canney, TD.

The biggest success at the event was with Clare-based Tekelek, whichsigned a $1.4m deal with PayGo, a company that provides sensors for businesses to monitor fuel consumption remotely and make changes where necessary.

As part of the deal, Tekelek will begin developing an intrinsically safe sensor to facilitate the expansion of PayGos service offering in the US and Canadian markets.

Oliver McCarthy, general manager of Tekelek, said: Were very excited to apply this thinking and our technology to the industrial fuels marketplace, and were similarly pleased to partner with an organisation of PayGos calibre to bring our technologies to the North America market.

Dublin City Councils (DCC) Smart Dublin initiative has announced a partnership with the Connect Centre and Intel to deploy low-cost sensors across the capital to monitor rainfall, weather conditions and river levels.

The new sensors will communicate data wirelessly to DCCs operations team, which will analyse water levels and use Connects Pervasive Nation IoT network to provide city authorities with an early warning of potential flooding.

Jamie Cudden, DCCs Smart City programme manager, said: Dublin is emerging as a leading location for smart city and IoT innovations.

Intels Dublin Living Lab programme has already carried out some initial flood monitoring activity across the city, which has led to the prototyping of a set of river and rainfall sensors.

Autonomous cars are gradually heading onto our open roads, albeit with a driver behind the wheel to make sure everything goes OKduring the trials.

Now, anew method of testing these cars developed by the University of Michigan may have found a way to drastically cut the amount of time it could take to make them road-legal.

Developed using data from more than 40m km of driving in the real world, a team of researchers believes that they can save 99.9pc of the testing time and costs with their system.

The evaluation process breaks down typical driving situations into components that can be tested or simulated over and over again, exposing autonomous vehicles to a condensed set of the most challenging driving situations.

This, the researchers argue, means that 1,600km of testing would equate to 1.6m km in real-world testing, but, in order to make the public feel safe being in these vehicles, as much as 20bn km of testing will need to be done.

The teams white paper is published here.

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D-Wave partners with U of T to move quantum computing along – Financial Post

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Not even the greatest geniuses in the world could explain quantum computing.

In the early 1930s Einstein, in fact, called quantum mechanics the basis for quantum computing spooky action at a distance.

Then theres a famous phrase from the late Nobel Laureate in physics, Richard Feynman: If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you dont understand quantum mechanics.

That may be so, but the mystery behind quantum has not stopped D-Wave Systems Inc. from making its mark in the field. In the 1980s it was thought maybe quantum mechanics could be used to build a computer. So people starting coming up with ideas on how to build one, says Bo Ewald, president of D-Wave in Burnaby, B.C.

Two of those people were UBC PhD physics grads Eric Ladizinsky and Geordie Rose, who had happened to take an entrepreneur course before founding D-Wave in 1999. Since there werent a lot of businesses in the field, they created and collected patents around quantum, Ewald says.

What we have with D-Wave is the mother of all ships: that is the hardware capability to unlock the future of AI

While most who were exploring the concept were looking in the direction of what is called the universal gate model, D-Wave decided to work on a different architecture, called annealing. The two do not necessarily compete, but perform different functions.

In quantum annealing, algorithms quickly search over a space to find a minimum (or solution). The technology is best suited for speeding research, modelling or traffic optimization for example.

Universal gate quantum computing can put basic quantum circuit operations together to create any sequence to run increasingly complex algorithms. (Theres a third model, called topological quantum computing, but it could be decades before it can be commercialized.)

When D-Wave sold its first commercial product to Lockheed Martin about six years ago, it marked the first commercial sale of a quantum computer, Ewald says. Google was the second to partner with D-Wave for a system that is also being run by NASA Ames Research Center. Each gets half of the machine, Ewald says. They believed quantum computing had an important future in machine learning.

Most recently D-Wave has been working with Volkswagen to study traffic congestion in Beijing. They wanted to see if quantum computing would have applicability to their business, where there are lots of optimization problems. Another recent coup is a deal with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Theres no question that any quantum computing investment is a long-term prospect, but that has not hindered their funding efforts. To date, the company has acquired more than 10 rounds of funding from the likes of PSP, Goldman Sachs, Bezos Expeditions, DFJ, In-Q-Tel, BDC Capital, GrowthWorks, Harris & Harris Group, International Investment and Underwriting, and Kensington Partners Ltd.

What we have with D-Wave is the mother of all ships: that is the hardware capability to unlock the future of AI, says Jrme Nycz, executive vice-president, BDC Capital. We believe D-Waves quantum capabilities have put Canada on the map.

Now, Ewing says, the key for the company moving forward is getting more smart people working on apps and on software tools in the areas of AI, machine earning and deep learning.

To that end, D-Wave recently not only open-sourced its Qbsolv software tool, it launched an initiative with Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management to create a new track focused on quantum machine learning. The intensive one-year program will go through an introductory boot camp led by Dr. Peter Wittek, author of Quantum Machine Learning: What Quantum Computing means to Data Mining, with instruction and technical support from D-Wave experts, and access to a D-Wave technology.

While it is still early days in terms of deployment for quantum computing, Ewald believes D-Waves early start gives them a leg up if and when quantum hits the mainstream. So far customers tend to be government and/or research related. Google is the notable exception. But once apps come along that are applicable for other industries, it will all make sense.

The early start has given D-Wave the experience to be able to adopt other architectures as they evolve. It may be a decade before a universal gate model machine becomes a marketable product. If that turns out to be true, we will have a 10-year lead in getting actual machines into the field and having customers working on and developing apps.

Ewald is the first to admit that as an early entrant, D-Wave faces criticism around its architecture. There are a lot of spears and things that we tend to get in the chest. But we see them coming and can deal with it. If we can survive all that, we will have a better view of the market, real customers and relationships with accelerators like Creative Destruction Lab. At the end of day we will have the ability to adapt when we need to.

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D-Wave partners with U of T to move quantum computing along - Financial Post

Here’s How We Can Achieve Mass-Produced Quantum Computers – ScienceAlert

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Still waiting patiently for quantum computing to bring about the next revolution in digital processing power? We might now be a little closer, with a discovery that could help us build quantum computers at mass scale.

Scientists have refined a technique using diamond defects to store information, adding silicon to make the readouts more accurate and suitable for use in the quantum computers of the future.

To understand how the new process works, you need to go back to the basics of the quantum computing vision: small particles kept in a state of superposition, where they can represent both 1, 0, and a combination of the two at the same time.

These quantum bits, or qubits, can process calculations on a much grander scale than the bits in today's computer chips, which are stuck representing either 1 or 0 at any one time.

Getting particles in a state of superposition long enough for us to actually make use of them has proved to be a real challenge for scientists, but one potential solution is through the use of diamond as a base material.

The idea is to use tiny atomic defects inside diamonds to store qubits, and then pass around data at high speeds using light optical circuits rather than electrical circuits.

Diamond-defect qubits rely on a missing carbon atom inside the diamond lattice which is then replaced by an atom of some other element, like nitrogen. The free electrons created by this defect have a magnetic orientation that can be used as a qubit.

So far so good, but our best efforts so far haven't been accurate enough to be useful, because of the broad spectrum of frequencies in the light emitted and that's where the new research comes in.

Scientists added silicon to the qubit creation process, which emits a much narrower band of light, and supplies the precision that quantum computing requires.

At the moment, these silicon qubits don't keep their superposition as well, but the researchers are hopeful this can be overcome by reducing their temperature to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

"The dream scenario in quantum information processing is to make an optical circuit to shuttle photonic qubits and then position a quantum memory wherever you need it," says one of the team, Dirk Englund from MIT. "We're almost there with this. These emitters are almost perfect."

In fact, the researchers produced defects within 50 nanometres of their ideal locations on average, which is about one thousandth the size of a human hair.

Being able to etch defects with this kind of precision means the process of building optical circuits for quantum computers then becomes more straightforward and feasible.

If the team can improve on the promising results so far, diamonds could be the answer to our quantum computing needs: they also naturally emit light in a way that means qubits can be read without having to alter their states.

You still won't be powering up a quantum laptop anytime soon, but we're seeing real progress in the study of the materials and techniques that might one day bring this next-generation processing power to the masses.

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

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Here's How We Can Achieve Mass-Produced Quantum Computers - ScienceAlert

Quantum Physics and Love are Super Weird and Confusing, but This Play Makes Sense of Them Both – LA Magazine

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Hear us out

June 5, 2017 Marielle Wakim Theater

In The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost wrote, Two roads diverged in a yellow wood / And sorry I could not travel both. But what if you could travel both? What if an alternate version of you is traveling the other road right now, except youre wearing cleaner jeans and went with cereal, not eggs, for breakfast? That mind-melting concept is the basis of Constellations, a two-character play opening June 6 at the Geffen Playhouse.

Photograph by Luke Fontana

Playwright Nick Payne conceived his career-launching 2012 drama after stumbling on The Elegant Universe, a documentary by physicist Brian Greene. It turned Payne onto the Quantum Multiverse, the idea that different scenarios play out in endless parallel realities. Constellations zooms in on the infinite loop lived by beekeeper Roland (Downton Abbeys Allen Leech) and cosmologist Marianne (Once Upon a Times Ginnifer Goodwin). Take, for instance, the pairs introduction at a barbecue, a meeting that is repeated a few times over to various ends: In one version, Roland has a girlfriend. In another, hes married. Theres a round in which Marianne wins him over with small talk and another when she doesnt. Over 70 minutes, they break up and stay together, marry and divorce, cheat on and stay true to each other. The effect is engrossing, fueling daydreams about what couldve been if only wed taken the red pill instead of the blue. Chance is our saving grace and our Achilles heel, Payne once wrote. We are both wildly autonomous and utterly powerless.

Goodwin, for whom quantum physics is a pastime (really), calls the plays structure enrapturing. She may be biased, but audiences were smitten when the production ran in London and, three years later, on Broadway, where Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson (The Affair) starred. Critics felt the same, if not a little mystified; The New Yorkers John Lahr described it as a singular astonishment but also admitted that he hadnt grasped for certain what it means. Payne is in the same boat. I dont really know what its meaning is, he says. Im very happy not to know and to allow audiences to take from it what they wish. I suspect it might be more about death and love, though, than it is about theoretical physics.

Tags: Allen Leech, Constellations, Downton Abbey, Ginnifer Goodwin, Once Upon A Time, The Geffen Playhouse

This article originally appeared in the June 2017 issue.

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Quantum Physics and Love are Super Weird and Confusing, but This Play Makes Sense of Them Both - LA Magazine

It’s widely abused as a buzzword. But can quantum mechanics explain how we think? – National Post

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

National Post

It's widely abused as a buzzword. But can quantum mechanics explain how we think?
National Post
But deterministic physics is outdated. The core of quantum mechanics is that there is not much certain at the subatomic level. Everything is more or less potential, probabilistic, at least until you observe and measure it. Then, the various ...

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It's widely abused as a buzzword. But can quantum mechanics explain how we think? - National Post

Quantum physics is oppressive – Patheos – Patheos (blog)

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Quantum physics is oppressive, according to a feminist scholar, because it promotes binary and absolute differences. This makes it hierarchical and exploitative. As such, it is part of the system that enables oppression.

This is an example of the anti-intellectualism and Stalinism that is plaguing the academic world. Stalinist because it subjects all knowledge and cultureincluding scientific findingsto a political critique. It then seeks to silence and punish scientists, artists, and intellectuals who do not conform to the Marxist, or, in this case, post-Marxist worldview.

But it raises another issue. The scholar contends, in effect, that the structure of natureas physicists have studied itteaches that there are binary differences. For example, positive and negative charges, which she contends encourages people to think in terms of male and female.

She believes that conclusions drawn from nature should be suppressed in the name of social causes.She thinks we should replace quantum physics with what she calls quantum feminisms.

But what if society, culture, and human beings are tied to nature? Maybe nature really has binary differences and this is why society and the human mind also have them. This is part of what classical thinkers mean by natural law, that human social and moral life are not arbitrary or humanly-made constructions; rather, they are connected to nature; that is, to reality.

From Katherine Timpf,Quantum Physics: Oppressive to Marginalized People | National Review:

A feminist scholar has published a paper claiming that quantum physics is oppressive and that we must use quantum feminisms to make the science more intersectional.

In a paper for The Minnesota Review, culture and gender-studies researcher Whitney Stark argues that physics is oppressive because it has separated beings based on their binary and absolute differences a structure that she calls hierarchical and exploitative and the same kind of system is embedded in many structures of classification, making it part of the apparatus that enables oppression.

Stark explains: This structural thinking of individualized separatism with binary and absolute differences as the basis for how the universe works seeped into/poured over/ is embedded in many structures of classification, which understand similarity and difference in the world, imposed in many hierarchical and exploitative organizational structures, whether through gender, life/nonlife, national borders, and so on.

According to Stark, the tendency to categorize in this way particularly hurts marginalized people because it can cause the activist efforts of minority groups to be overshadowed by the efforts of dominant groups

[Keep reading. . .]

Illustration: Propaganda Poster of Joseph Stalin (1941), from the collection of the National Archives UK Marshall Stalin, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20461157

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Quantum physics is oppressive - Patheos - Patheos (blog)

It’s Time to Demand Donald Trump’s Resignation – RollingStone.com

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

How many times in the 19-and-a-half weeks since January 20th have you needed to remind yourself to breathe, to remain calm, not to panic? Do you regularly tell yourself it can't possibly be as bad as you think? Are you worried you're overreacting?

You aren't. It's as bad as you think, and possibly worse. We've elected a president who isn't just unqualified for the job but who actively hurts the United States every day. Your palms should be clammy with fear.

I'm not just speaking to my fellow liberal snowflakes. I guarantee you the conservatives and Republicans who have been shaking their heads quietly as their president sticks his gnarled foot in his enormous mouth have started to feel the silent creep of fear crawl up the backs of their necks too.

It has gotten that bad. He is that bad. He's a toddler, but with less empathy and self-control.

Over the last few days, Trump has shown himself to be more unfit than ever before and made it clear he has no business remaining in the White House for even one additional day. Let's take a brief stroll through the Twitter feed of the current president of the United States.

Trump reacted to terrorist attacks with false bravado and genuine stupidity long before becoming president. But since January, optimists have hoped the enormity of his responsibilities would bring out his better nature. They didn't realize he doesn't have one.

Saturday's London Bridge attack in particular seems to have shorted something in the president's brain. The United Kingdom's strict gun control laws likely kept more dangerous weapons out of the hands of the terrorists, saving countless lives. (Meanwhile, in Orlando Monday, a law-abiding gun owner walked into his former workplace and murdered five people before killing himself.)

Trump then took to Twitter to attack the mayor of London who is Muslim taking out of context a quote urging citizens not to be alarmed by increased police presence.

The president attacking the mayor of the largest city of our closest ally in the wake of a terror attack is just as horrific as you think it is. It is unthinking, unhinged and unkind. In a moment when any remotely normal human being would be offering sympathy and help, Trump has only bile to offer.

Just like you, the lawyers in the office of the solicitor general are probably reminding themselves not to panic on a daily basis. Five separate times this week, Trump tweeted the words "TRAVEL BAN" to describe the, well, travel bans he signed directed at Muslim-majority countries.

Trump's own spokesman has insisted the executive order is "not a travel ban" because calling it a "ban" is a legal disaster for the administration, which has failed so far in defending the policy in court. Trump's rhetoric only makes his lawyers' job more difficult, but he doesn't care. Instead of doing the prudent thing and not talking about an ongoing legal case, Trump is making it virtually impossible to win, choosing to throw a tantrum in public instead.

As late as Tuesday morning, Trump's Twitter unraveling continued. The decision by Saudi Arabia and other Middle East nations to cut ties with Qatar is, to understate matters, a diplomatic situation of extreme delicacy. Instead of handling the situation with even a modicum of common sense, Trump took sides on Twitter.

Attacking established adversaries like Iran or North Korea is one thing. Qatar hosts thelargest American military base in the Middle East. Jumping into the fray to attack the nation is beyond stupid; it endangers the 11,000 members of the U.S. armed forces who live there.

I'm not going to speculate on the mental health of the president. I'm not qualified, and ultimately I'm not certain it matters whether these extraordinary lapses in judgment are the result of dementia, pathological narcissism, sociopathy or just a shitty personality. What matters is what the president of the United States is saying publicly, every day, and the extraordinary damage he is doing to the nation and its people.

There is only one sensible reaction to Trump's antics: for members of Congress and influential conservatives to demand he resign.

You and I both know he's not leaving the White House willingly, or at least not anytime soon. But this is no longer anything approaching a close call. The things the president says and writes, in public, are more than enough evidence to declare him grossly unfit for a job as a tollbooth operator, let alone as the most powerful person in the world.

Many of the Republicans defending him in Congress and on TV see his tweets and know he's crossed the line. They'll keep defending him; they're too afraid of primary elections in their own districts to take a strong line against Trump.

But they should reconsider. Whatever is causing Trump to unravel, it's putting the rest of us in serious danger. The continued spectacle of the Russia investigation is only fueling his descent. Why wait for it to unfold further? The best-case scenario is dragging the nation through a prolonged impeachment ordeal. If not, we have to wait until 2021 to replace him with a responsible and decent human being assuming he doesn't get us all killed by then.

There's a better way. Start the discussion now. Call on Trump to step down. Hell, if you're a Republican, you end up with President Mike Pence, and you probably love Mike Pence. I can't stand the guy, but at least he won't start World War III with an ill-advised 4 a.m. tweet.

It would take enormous, sustained pressure from both sides of the aisle to convince Trump to resign the presidency. It's possible it would never work. The delicate bubble of ego that Trump keeps overinflated around himself never allows errors to reach his muddled mind. Stepping down would be admitting a failure on an enormous scale, and admitting failure is the one thing Trump won't do.

But whether you're a liberal or a conservative or somewhere in between, if you care about your country really care about the greatness of America it's clear Trump can no longer be president. And urging him to step down now is the only option we have to get him out quickly.

Besides, think of how much more golf he'd get to play.

Whether Trump eventually will be forced out of office is as much a political question as it is a legal one. Find out how impeaching him would work. Watch here.

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It's Time to Demand Donald Trump's Resignation - RollingStone.com

Donald Trump is the best 2020 recruiter Democrats could hope for – CNN

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Hillary Clinton's defeat was stunning enough. But the fact that she lost to Donald Trump led Democrats to question whether they had fundamentally misread the American public, and whether their party and its message needed a total overhaul.

"Presidential buzz seems to be building around an unusually large and varied group of Democrats and famous names from outside of politics -- a parlor game that includes pretty much every current Democratic senator and governor, mayors and House members, barons of the business world and, of course, the occasional wild-card celebrity. The Hill newspaper recently tallied 43 people who might run against Donald Trump."

Now, simply because lots and lots of candidates are considering the race doesn't mean Democrats have solved all of the problems the 2016 campaign exposed. Democrats still have to litigate out whether it's Joe Biden's party or Elizabeth Warren's party going forward. And there are lots and lots voices who want to have a say in that debate.

Don't see your favorite candidate? Never fear! There's still (lots of) time!

1st Tier (If they run, they have a real chance to win the nomination)

"He hasn't made up his mind," former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told Tumulty of the Vermont independent. "He's open to it." Got it.

Warren, more so -- to my mind -- than Sanders, is the face of liberals nationally. I don't think that means Sanders would stand down for Warren, but it's hard to see how the top tier could fit both of them.

2nd Tier (Have potential to be a major contender but not there ... yet)

It remains to be seen whether Democrats in 2020 want to totally and completely move on from what happened in 2016. If they do, Kaine, who shared the ticket with Clinton, will have a hard time. If not, however, lots of the things that made him attractive as a VP -- governor and senator of a swing state, bilingual, etc. -- would also make him an appealing presidential candidate.

The Connecticut Senator won't have room to run if Sanders and/or Warren do. But, if they don't -- and neither is a sure thing -- he could well slot into the leading liberal role, given his outspokenness on gun control in the wake of Newtown and, more recently, his vocal opposition to the Trump presidency.

3rd Tier (It's not IM-possible)

Moulton is one of the young up-and-coming Democrats in the House. But, that's probably where he'll stay for now.

Tier-less (Rich businesspeople who've never run for anything before)

Donald Trump is the best 2020 recruiter Democrats could hope for - CNN

No, Donald Trump doesn’t have 110 million people following him on social media – Washington Post

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President Trump's use of Twitter "gives him an opportunity to speak straight to the American people," and is an effective tool, on June 6 at the White House. (Reuters)

This article has been updated.

During the daily press briefing at the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about President Trumps tweet earlier in the day claiming that the media was trying to get him to stop tweeting. (We very much are not.)

Wasnt it the case, Spicer was asked, that Trump often does himself more harm than good with his from-the-hip tweeting?

The president is the most effective messenger on his agenda, Spicer replied. I think his use of social media he now has a collective total of close to 110 million people across different platforms gives him an opportunity to speak straight to the American people, which has proved to be a very, very effective tool.

One can debate whether Trumps Twitter feed has been terribly effective at making him successful, post-election. But one cannot debate the assertion that Trump has 110 million people following him on social media, because he doesnt.

Trump has at least two accounts on four of the biggest social media platforms. Combined, those accounts have about 93.1 million followers. Here they are, in descending order of number of followers. (All figures are as of writing.)

Trumps got accounts on Snapchat, too: realdonaldtrump and whitehouse. Snapchat doesnt release public figures about the number of followers.

Clearly, 93.1 million is a smaller number than 110 million. So where do those other 17-odd million come from? Some come from Snapchat, but generally, its not clear. The term social media is nebulous. Does YouTube count? Trumps account there has about 109,000 followers. What about Reddit? The virulent pro-Trump community r/The_Donald claims 6 million subscribers, but thats not social media, and that figure should be taken with a grain of salt.

But even if we manage to cobble together some number that gets close to 110 million, there are two very good reasons that Trumps not followed by 110 million people. First, a lot of those people follow multiple accounts across those networks and, second, some followers are robots.

This latter point seized the publics imagination last week as rumors that Trump was buying Twitter followers were rampant. (Trump saw an uptick in his follower count, but not by the millions, and theres no indicator that anything untoward was happening.) But those rumors centered around the idea that an army of bots that is, automated accounts driven by code, not people was being created to do something nefarious. People dutifully plugged Trumps Twitter accounts into tools that try to estimate how many fake accounts followed Trump and determined that perhaps half of his followers fit that description.

Its important here to interject with two other important points. First of all, botsplay the role in the public imagination that atomic energy played in 1950s comic books. Its this sort of vaguely understood thing thats generally assumed to be bad, and the negative effects of bots are blown way out of proportion. Bots are our modern boogeyman, and we tend to overinflatetheir existence and impact. That includes those are my followers bots? tools, which just look at how often people have tweeted and when their accounts were created and so on, and are therefore not necessarily a good guide to how many of the accounts actually arent driven by humans.

That said, there are certainly thousands or millions of followers of the @realdonaldtrump account who are actually automated accounts. There are also any number of followers that are tied to businesses or tied back to the same individual. For example, I have probably a dozen Twitter accounts tied to my name, since I make little bots like @trumphop, which automatically retweets old Trump tweets. Lots of other people have multiple accounts, too.

Which loops us back to the first point. If youre active on political Twitter, you probably follow both @realdonaldtrump and @POTUS. You may follow both Trump and the White House on Facebook. Trump fans almost certainly follow him on both Twitter and Facebook, and probably Instagram, too. Its very fair to assume that at least half of the followers on Trumps social media accounts also follow one of his other accounts which would mean that, instead of 93.1 million people following him, the number is closer to 47 million.

But lets be more generous than that and assume that not everyone follows him on at least two of those accounts. Lets assume that only a third do. That would mean that about 62.3 million people follow him on social media or about one person for every vote he got last year. And many of those people live outside the United States or are bots.

In short, Spicers count of how many people are tracking Trump on social media is clearly inflated. But then, this is the guy whose first day on the job was spent defending the claim that 1.5 million people attended Trumps inauguration.

Maybe Spicers just bad at math.

Update: And maybe Im bad at Facebook. Added the POTUS account there, after missing it first time around.

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No, Donald Trump doesn't have 110 million people following him on social media - Washington Post

Donald Trump Escalates Qatar Crisis – HuffPost

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump escalated a spiraling Middle East crisis on Tuesday morning in tweets attacking Qatar,which hosts 10,000 American troops at the largest U.S. military base in the region.

Beginning a little after 8 a.m., the president put out three statements criticizing Qatar and praising neighboring countries including Saudi Arabia for their moves to isolate the nation in recent days.

The presidents new messages endorse the claims of Qatars neighbors, who have waged a years-long campaign to draw U.S. attention to their anxieties about Qatars links to political Islam. Emails obtained and authenticated by HuffPost last week show the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the U.S. talking explicitly about shutting down the U.S. base and encouraging former Defense Secretary Bob Gates to publicly criticize Qatar.

U.S. officials have tried to avoid the appearance of picking a side in the dispute, which Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and aligned nations say is over Qatars support for violent militants. (Qatar strongly denies the charges.)The Emirates has already taken a hard line, sayingQatar will need to make major concessions for it to re-establish normal ties with the country.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson both expressed hope the tension would be resolved soon. The U.S. ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith,said on Twitter that the country had made progress on blocking terror finance, and military officials saidthe American base, the hub of operations against the Islamic State group, was functioning normally.

Qatars defenders say it values its ties to Washington, has been cracking down on private citizens aiding extremists and is hardly the only Middle East nation to struggle with controlling extremist support. They note that Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have both hosted radical preachers and terror funders.

Kuwait, an influential neighbor of the countries involved and a fellow U.S. partner, is now attempting to mediate. Though U.S. officials and the Trump administration in particular have seemed sympathetic to worries about Qatars links to Islamist politicians, Trumps tweets on Tuesday signal that they are willing to actually help increase pressure on Qatar during this new crisis. Support from Washington will likely embolden the Emirates and other Qatar skeptics.

The president seems to be taking the matter personally, linking it to his high-profile trip to Saudi Arabia. Analysts saythe regional tensions reveal that Trump had failed to meet his goal of rallying Muslim support around his agenda. It demonstrates how superficial his achievements were, Henri Barkey, a former State Department official and current Woodrow Wilson Center think tank expert, told HuffPost yesterday.

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Donald Trump Escalates Qatar Crisis - HuffPost

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