China’s Culture of Compliance Is Crippling the Country - TIME

http://time.com/2797346/tiananmen-square-anniversary/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Rana Foroohar @RanaForoohar
 

May 30, 2014

    

Standing tall A Chinese youth at a demonstration in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 1, 1989Eric Bouvet—Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Next week will be the 25thanniversary of Tiananmen Square. It was a turning point not only for China, but also for the world, in the sense that it heralded a new era in which growing wealth and growing political freedom in emerging markets didn’t necessary go hand in hand. This year, China will very likely overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. It has certainly become wealthy. But it has also become less free–as have so many of the world’s largest developing nations–think Russia, Turkey, many parts of Africa and Latin America, etc.

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The question is, that can juxtaposition last another 25 years—or even another five? It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, particularly as I delve into New Yorker writer Evan Osnos’ very interesting new book on China, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China” (FSG). The core premise of the book is that individual ambition and authoritarianism in countries like China will inevitably come into conflict with one another. As people get richer, they want more freedom, and they put pressure on their governments to deliver it. The problem is that these governments are often much better at delivering wealth than they are at delivering anything close to liberal democracy.

I think we may be reaching a tipping point in the next few years around that juxtaposition between growth and choice in the emerging world. China is, as always, the most dramatic example of this. The recent cyber-hacking scandal, for example, was portrayed by many pundits as yet another example of how the Middle Kingdom is leaping ahead of U.S. government and business interests, stealing American intellectual property and using it to gain a competitive edge. But as I argued, China’s IP theft actually underscores what a “me too” economy the Middle Kingdom still is. China is good, very good, at copycatting other people’s ideas (Osnos’ stories of various Chinese entrepreneurs, like the village woman behind the Chinese version of match.com, are fascinating on this score), but it has yet to create many global brands–aside from Lenovo’s computers and the college mini-fridges made by the low-end white goods producer Haier.

I think the lack of a top-shelf innovation culture has a lot to do with the lack of choice in Chinese society. I once spoke to a Wal-Mart executive in China who told me that he had trouble getting employees in one department to address basic problems in another–picking up boxes that had fallen off a shelf, or order new supplies, for example–because they were afraid of stepping out of their silos. That’s not about work ethic–the Chinese have that in spades–but a culture of compliance. In China, it’s important, sometimes deadly important, to swim in your own lane.

Another issue with the growth of higher end Chinese business is that entrepreneurs don’t trust the stability of the government. I’ve heard time and time again from wealthy people in China (many of whom are looking to get their money out – witness the percentage of high end property purchases in luxury real estate markets worldwide that are made by the Chinese) is that it doesn’t pay to develop businesses for the long haul here, because uncertainly and political risk is so high. People tend to get in, get out, and become serial entrepreneurs, rather than spending decades working on innovation, a la developed countries like the U.S., Japan, or Germany.

How will all this affect China? If the Middle Kingdom can’t make the leap to the “middle income” stage of development, which history shows is the trickiest one (only a handful of developing countries globally have made it), then unemployment will rise and social stability will fall. How will that affect Americans? In a sense, it already is. Trade tensions mean many U.S. companies are rethinking how, or if, they’ll do business in China, with myriad ramifications for us all. For more on all of that, as well as the economic legacy of the Tiananmen event, listen to my radio show, Money Talking, on WNYC this week

Google sets up 'right to be forgotten' form after EU ruling - BBC NEWS

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27631001

30 May 2014 Last updated at 05:15

Google has launched a service to allow Europeans to ask for personal data to be removed from online search results.

The move comes after a landmark European Union court ruling earlier this month, which gave people the "right to be forgotten".

Links to "irrelevant" and outdated data should be erased on request, it said.

Google said it would assess each request and balance "privacy rights of the individual with the public's right to know and distribute information".

"When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there's a public interest in the information," Google says on the form which applicants must fill in.

Google said it would look at information about "financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials" while deciding on the request.

Earlier this month, the BBC learned that more than half of requests sent to Google from UK individuals involved convicted criminals.

This included a man convicted of possessing child abuse images who had also asked for links to pages about his conviction to be wiped.

'Fraudulent requests'

“Start Quote

As we regulate the internet, I think we're not going to see the kind of innovation we've seen”

Larry PageGoogle

On 13 May, the EU's court of justice ruled that links to "irrelevant" and outdated data on search engines should be erased on request.

The case was brought by a Spanish man who complained that an auction notice of his repossessed home, which appeared on Google's search results, infringed his privacy.

On Friday, Google said that EU citizens who want their private details removed from the search engine will be able to do so by filling out an online form.

However, they will need to provide links to the material they want removed, their country of origin, and a reason for their request.

Individuals will also have to attach a valid photo identity.

"Google often receives fraudulent removal requests from people impersonating others, trying to harm competitors, or improperly seeking to suppress legal information," the firm said.

"To prevent this kind of abuse, we need to verify identity."

Less innovation?

However, in an interview given to the Financial Times, Google boss Larry Page said that although the firm would comply with the ruling, it could damage innovation.

He also said the regulation would give cheer to repressive regimes.

Mr Page said he regretted not being "more involved in a real debate" about privacy in Europe, and that the company would now try to "be more European".

But, he warned, "as we regulate the internet, I think we're not going to see the kind of innovation we've seen".

Mr Page added that the ruling would encourage "other governments that aren't as forward and progressive as Europe to do bad things".

A right to be forgotten?

• In 2012, the European Commission published plans for a "right to be forgotten" law, allowing people to request that data about themselves to be deleted
• Online service providers would have to comply unless they had "legitimate" reason to do otherwise
• The plans are part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the commission's 1995 Data Protection Directive
• UK's Ministry of Justice claims that the law "raises unrealistic and unfair expectations"
• Some tech firms have expressed concern about the reach of the bill

People Are Already Scrambling to Get Their Past Scrubbed From Google - TIME

http://time.com/103381/google-right-forgotten-takedown-requests/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Victor Luckerson @VLuck
 

May 16, 2014

    

Just three days after the European Union’s high court ruled that citizens have a right to request search engines remove information about them from search results, people are already lining up to have unsavory bits of their history scrubbed from Google’s servers

Just three days after the European Union’s high court ruled that citizens have the “right to be forgotten” from search engine results, Europeans are already lining up to get unsavory bits of their history scrubbed from Google’s servers. The tech giant is scrambling to come up with a mechanism to handle the flood of requests and could face new financial costs because of the ruling.

More than 500 million people across 28 European countries now have the legal right to demand that Google remove from its search results links that they believe are no longer timely or relevant, even if the facts contained in said links are true. Already a former politician who wants to run again has requested that Google remove articles about his past time in office, according to a person familiar with the matter. Other requests have come from a university lecturer who wants to scrub articles about his job suspension and a man convicted of owning child pornography who wants to remove articles about the conviction, the person familiar said.

It’s not yet clear whether Google has complied with these or any other takedown requests.

“The ruling has significant implications for how we handle takedown requests,” a Google spokesperson said in an email. “This is logistically complicated – not least because of the many languages involved and the need for careful review. As soon as we have thought through exactly how this will work, which may take several weeks, we will let our users know.” He declined to say how many takedown requests Google has received, but a German regulator told the New York Timesthat such requests in Germany had increased tenfold since the ruling.

The tech giant is still reeling from the surprise judgment by the European Union’s Court of Justice, which ruled in favor of a Spanish lawyer who had been demanding Google to remove links to an article about debts he owed in the 1990’s. The ruling, centered on the idea that old web pages would fall out of public knowledge if not for Google’s ability to quickly scour the entire Web, vastly broadens the scope of a 1995 directive that grants Europeans extensive protections for their personal data. If Google refuses to comply with a citizen’s takedown demand, that person can have a judge or arbiter decide on the validity of the case. Google could potentially face significant costs litigating to keep old links in its search database and implementing a system that allows it to comb through thousands of takedown requests. Yahoo search and Microsoft’s Bing will also be affected.

Because of First Amendment protections of free speech and Google’s large political clout, experts believe it ishighly unlikely that the “right to be forgotten” will ever be adopted as law in the United States.

13 Easy Ways to Teach Yourself to Be More Confident -TIME

http://time.com/107218/be-more-self-confident/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Minda Zetlin
 

May 21, 2014

    

Few are born confident, research shows. The self-assured learn to be that way, and you can too

Are you as confident as you’d like to be? Few people would answer “yes” to that question. But, according to Becky Blalock, author and former Fortune 500 executive, anyone can learn to be more confident. And it’s a skill we can teach ourselves.

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Begin by forgetting the notion that confidence, leadership, and public speaking are abilities people are born with. In fact, research shows that being shy and cautious is the natural human state. “That’s how people in early times lived to pass on their genes, so it’s in our gene pool,” she says. “You had to be cautious to survive. But the things they needed to worry about then are not the things we need to worry about today.”

How do you teach yourself to be more confident? Here’s Blalock’s advice:

1. Put your thoughts in their place.

The average human has 65,000 thoughts every day, Blalock says, and 85 to 90 percent of them are negative–things to worry about or fear. “They’re warnings to yourself,” Blalock says, and left over from our cave-dwelling past. It makes sense–if we stick our hand in a flame our brain wants to make sure we don’t ever do that again. But this survival mechanism works against us because it causes us to focus on fears rather than hopes or dreams.

The point is to be aware that your brain works this way, and keep that negativity in proportion. “What you have to realize is your thoughts are just thoughts,” Blalock says. They don’t necessarily represent objective reality.

2. Begin at the end.

“There are so many people that I’ve asked, ‘What do you want to do? What do you want to be?’ and they would say, ‘I don’t know,’” Blalock says. “Knowing what you want is the key. Everything else you do should be leading you where you want to go.”

3. Start with gratitude.

Begin the day by thinking about some of the things you have to be grateful for, Blalock advises. “Most of the 7 billion people in the world won’t have the opportunities you do,” she says. “If you start out with that perspective, you’ll be in the right frame of mind for the rest of the day.”

4. Take a daily step outside your comfort zone.

There’s a funny thing about comfort zones. If we step outside them on a regular basis, they expand. If we stay within them, they shrink. Avoid getting trapped inside a shrinking comfort zone by pushing yourself to do things that are outside it.

We’ve all had experiences where we’ve done something that terrified us, and then discovered it wasn’t so bad. In Blalock’s case, she was visiting a military base and had gotten to the top of the parachute-training tower for a practice jump. “They had me all hooked up, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this, I have a small child at home,’” she recalls. “The guy took his foot and pushed me off the tower. When I got out there I realized it wasn’t that bad.”

We won’t always have someone standing by to kick us out of our comfort zones, so we have to do it for ourselves. “Just act!” Blalock says.

5. Remember: Dogs don’t chase parked cars.

If you’re running into opposition, questions, and doubts, there’s probably a good reason–you’re going somewhere. That doesn’t mean you should ignore warning signs, but it does mean you should put those negatives in perspective. If you don’t make changes, and challenge the status quo, no one will ever object to anything you do.

6. Get ready to bounce back.

“It’s not failure that destroys our confidence, it’s not getting back up,” Blalock says. “Once we get back up, we’ve learned what doesn’t work and we can give it another try.” Blalock points out that the baseball players with the biggest home run records also have the biggest strikeout records. Taking more swings gets you where you want to go.

7. Find a mentor.

Whatever you’ve set out to do, there are likely others who’ve done it first and can offer you useful advice or at least serve as role models. Find those people and learn as much from them as you can.

8. Choose your companions wisely.

“Your outlook–negative or positive–will be the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” Blalock says. “So be careful who you hang out with. Make sure you’re hanging out with people who encourage you and lift you up.”

When she quit her C-suite job to write books, she adds, some people were aghast and predicted that no one would read them while others were quite encouraging. It didn’t take her long to figure out that the encouraging friends were the ones she should gravitate toward.

9. Do your homework.

In almost any situation, preparation can help boost your confidence. Have to give a speech? Practice it several times, record yourself, and listen. Meeting people for the first time? Check them and their organizations out on the Web, and check their social media profiles as well. “If you’re prepared you will be more confident,” Blalock says. “The Internet makes it so easy.”

10. Get plenty of rest and exercise.

There’s ample evidence by now that getting enough sleep, exercise, and good nutrition profoundly affects both your mood and your effectiveness. “Just moderate exercise three times a week for 20 minutes does so much for the hippocampus and is more effective than anything else for warding off Alzheimer’s and depression,” Blalock says. “Yet it always falls of the list when we’re prioritizing. While there are many things we can delegate, exercise isn’t one of them. If there were a way to do that, I would have figured it out by now.”

11. Breathe!

“This one is so simple,” Blalock says. “If you breathe heavily, it saturates your brain with oxygen and makes you more awake and aware. It’s very important in a tense situation because it will make you realize that you control your body, and not your unconscious mind. If you’re not practicing breathing, you should be.”

12. Be willing to fake it.

No, you shouldn’t pretend to have qualifications or experience that you don’t. But if you have most of the skills you need and can likely figure out the rest, don’t hang back. One company did a study to discover why fewer of its female employees were getting promotions than men. It turned out not to be so much a matter of bias as of confidence: If a man had about half the qualifications for a posted job he’d be likely to apply for it, while a woman would be likelier to wait till she had most or all of them. Don’t hold yourself back by assuming you need to have vast experience for a job or a piece of business before you go after it.

13. Don’t forget to ask for help.

“Don’t assume people know what you want,” Blalock says. “You have to figure out what that is, and then educate them.”

Once people know what you want, and that you want their help, you may be surprised at how forthcoming they are. “People are really flattered when you ask for advice and support,” she says. “If someone says no you can always ask someone else. But in my experience, they rarely say no.”

D-Wave: Is $15m machine a glimpse of future computing? - BBC NEWS

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27264552

19 May 2014 Last updated at 23:37

D-Wave: Is $15m machine a glimpse of future computing?

By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website

D-Wave is headquartered in the small tech hub of Burnaby, near Vancouver

A Canadian firm has courted controversy with its claim to have built a practical quantum computer, a feat thought to be decades away. Now, independent researchers are trying to understand whether it really can tap the strange world of quantum physics.

For the modest sum of $15m (£9m), a start-up near Vancouver will sell you a black box the size of a garden shed with its logo emblazoned on the side in white neon.

Not sold yet?

What if I told you the contents of the box were around 150 times colder than interstellar space?

You still need some convincing - I get it.

How about this: The box contains a machine that can solve some of the thorniest mathematical problems and could revolutionise computing.

Well, the company's sales pitch has worked on some big names - likeNasa, Google, and defence giant Lockheed Martin.

The Canadian start-up in question is called D-Wave and their monolithic machine is - they claim - nothing less than a real, working quantum computer. But not everyone is convinced.

Quantum computing exploits the weird physics that takes hold at tiny (atomic or sub-atomic) scales. Computers that tap the quantum realm could carry out complex calculations much faster than their conventional - or classical - counterparts.

While the basic units of information in classical computers are called "bits" and are stored as a string of 1s and 0s, their equivalents in a quantum system - qubits - can be both 1s and 0s at the same time.

This phenomenon would enable multiple calculations to be performed simultaneously. But the qubits need to be synchronised using a quantum effect known as entanglement, which Albert Einstein termed "spooky action at a distance".

Scientists have struggled to entangle more than a handful of qubits, and to maintain them in their quantum state. Lab devices suffer from drop-out, where the qubits lose their ambiguity and become straightforward 1s and 0s. This has ensured that quantum computers remain confined to the lab - proofs of principle capable of solving only elementary problems.

Headquartered in the small tech hub of Burnaby, on Canada's west coast, D-Wave has raised upwards of $100m in venture capital from the likes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

A refrigerator cools the chip to a temperature around 150 times colder than interstellar space

"The original vision of the company was simple: build a commercially useful quantum computer as soon as possible," Vern Brownell, D-Wave's chief executive, tells me.

"We just want to provide quantum computing resources to researchers and businesses around the world so they can solve really hard problems, better than they can today."

So when, in 2007, D-Wave staged a demonstration of a quantum processor called Orion that could solve Sudoku puzzles and search a public database of drugs to find the closest match to a specific molecule - both impressive achievements in this field - it was greeted with deep scepticism.

Four years later, the company unveiled the "first commercially available quantum computer", a 128-qubit machine called the D-Wave One, and this time its claims weren't so easily dismissed. The announcement coincided with the publication of a study supporting the machine's quantum credentials in Nature, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the world.

This tempered some of the criticism, but fell short of winning over vocal sceptics like Scott Aaronson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He thinks the firm's computers show "pretty good" evidence for entanglement at a local level, though not necessarily on a large scale. But he sees no evidence that this is helping boost the performance of D-Wave's machines.

Prof Aaronson told BBC News: "The questions about 'the explanation for the speedup' haven't even been activated yet, since so far there's no speedup to explain!"

Mr Brownell comments: "What I think is really interesting is that scientists and researchers are no longer arguing about whether it works, it's how fast does it work? What's the scalability going to be?"

What is quantum physics?

There are things we take for granted about the world around us. Let go of your smartphone and it will fall to the ground. Pull the handle on a drawer and it will open. These familiar rules can be described by the principles of classical mechanics.

But in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, scientists were beginning to realise that classical physics could not explain certain phenomena seen at very large and very small scales.

This spawned two revolutions: one was relativity and the other quantum mechanics. Early experiments suggested light was a wave, rather than a stream of particles. In quantum theory, light can be both a particle (the photon) and a wave.

One principle central to quantum mechanics is that a particle, such as an electron, can exist in all of its possible states simultaneously - known as superposition. Another important idea is that of entanglement, a phenomenon whereby objects become linked, even if they lie far apart.

The company's first commercial machine was followed in 2013 by the D-Wave Two, powered by a 512-qubit chip called Vesuvius. Like its predecessor, this computer is not for conventional use, but was designed for solving optimisation problems, a particular class of mathematical challenge that entails finding the best solution from all the possible solutions.

Lockheed is using its D-Wave computer - housed at the University of Southern California - to verify and validate flight software. Google's machine, which is shared with Nasa at the space agency's Ames Research Center, is being used for machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence with applications in areas as diverse as voice recognition and detecting credit card fraud.

The big name buy-in has generated serious buzz, but sceptics have not been swayed.

"I don't care if the Messiah has come to Earth on a flaming chariot, not to usher in an age of peace but simply to spend $10m on D-Wave's new Vesuvius chip," Scott Aaronson wrote on his blog, adding that the considered opinion of an academic expert of his choice "would mean more to me than 500,000 business deals".

Quantum analogy: Standard computers "walk" across a landscape to find the lowest point (the "optimal" solution to the maths problem), whereas D-Wave's computers "tunnel" through the mountain range

D-Wave was founded in 1999 as a University of British Columbia spin-out by Rose - who holds a PhD in physics and a light-heavyweight world title in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu - and his academic mentor Haig Farris.

"The team spent about five years, with collaborators in various kinds of academic environments, coming to a view on the fastest way to come to market with something useful," says Mr Brownell.

The so-called gate model underpins the vast majority of academic research into quantum computing. This idea is based on developing the quantum equivalents of the logic gates that form the building blocks of circuits in classical computing.

Continue reading the main story

Quantum computing: A brief timeline

• 1981 - Richard Feynman of Caltech proposes a basic model for a quantum device
• 1985 - David Deutsch of Oxford University describes the first "Universal Quantum Computer"
• 1994 - Peter Shor devises algorithm that could allow quantum devices to defeat cryptography
• 1998 - First working two- and three-qubit quantum computers are demonstrated
• 2006 - Scientists develop first working 12-qubit platform
• 2009 - First universal programmable quantum computer unveiled
• 2012 - D-Wave Systems reveals a 512-qubit adiabatic quantum machine

But D-Wave settled on an approach called quantum annealing. Outlined in a seminal 2000 paper by Eddie Farhi of MIT, and others, this technique is fundamentally different to the theory of quantum gates.

In Rose's chosen martial art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, opponents start off on their feet and typically end up grappling on the mat. The aim in quantum annealing is also to reach the "ground state" - in this case, the lowest energy point.

One common analogy is that of a cross-section through a mountain range. The altitude of the landscape describes the energy, or cost, of the solution. The aim is to find the lowest point on the map and read the coordinates, as this gives the lowest energy, or "best", solution to the problem.

"The way you would do it in classical computing is to walk up and down the valleys and hills until you've found it," said Prof Alan Woodward, a computing expert from the University of Surrey.

"What the quantum annealing process does for you is effectively to tunnel through the mountain... until it announces: 'The lowest point I found was X'."

"It shortcuts everything, and that's how it speeds up."

Experts say quantum annealing can't offer the performance boost theoretically possible with gates, but proponents of D-Wave's approach point to innate advantages, such as greater robustness to the "drop-out" problem that plagues gate model quantum computing.

Dr Rose has even branded quantum gates the "single worst thing that ever happened to quantum computing".

The firm's chips are "superconducting", generating no heat of their own

Whatever the route taken, efforts to build a quantum computer must overcome daunting engineering hurdles. The circuits in D-Wave's processors are superconducting, which means they have zero electrical resistance and generate no heat. In order to get quantum effects, liquid helium is used to cool the chip to 0.02 Kelvin, a shade above the temperature known as absolute zero.

The whole system is enclosed in a so-called Faraday Cage, which blocks external electrical fields that could interfere with quantum mechanical behaviour.

Prof Andrew Steane, from the department of physics at Oxford University, says: "If you go back five or 10 years, the initial statements coming out of D-Wave - before they had a device to look at - were seen as something you could ignore, because it just didn't seem credible.

"Then they produced this device, so they came up with the goods. And it's a non-negligible device - it has serious computing power. It's just a question of whether what it's achieving is beyond what could have been done with a system based on classical physics."

Significant academic effort is now being thrown at this question. Last year saw the publication of several scientific studies favourable to the company's case, including indirect evidence for entanglement of qubits and research by Catherine McGeoch, a professor of computer science at Amherst College, that found the system performed 3,600 times faster on some tests than did a standard desktop machine.

But in January 2014, a team led by Matthias Troyer, of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, published results of its benchmarking of Lockheed's unit. Team members won't comment publicly until the work is published in a peer-reviewed journal, but in some tests devised by them, the D-Wave machine was found to perform no faster than a classical computer.

However, company executives counter that the tests used were not the sort where the quantum computer offers any advantage over conventional types.

Lockheed Martin is using its D-Wave computer to validate flight software

Then in February, a team led by Prof Umesh Vazirani, of the University of California, Berkeley, published a study concluding that a simple, classical computing model of interacting magnets could explain behaviour in D-Wave's machines.

In his response to an unfavourable blog entry about the paper penned by Dr Rose, Prof Vazirani suggested that key questions might be answered if D-Wave were to grant researchers access to its hardware, which is proprietary. However, not everyone thinks this would shed much light on the matter.

"At a high level, we know what the machine is doing: namely, it's doing annealing to the ground state, with superconducting Josephson junctions (paired superconductors) at 20mK (milliKelvin) temperature, in a way that's 'mostly classical' but that has some quantum effects present, at least at the local level," says Prof Aaronson.

"I think this research has actually reached some pretty firm conclusions: most importantly, that the current device is not getting a speedup on the problem distributions currently being tried," he explains.

Andrew Steane says the computers show promise, but on the question of whether they are exploiting quantum effects for performance gains he says the studies by Troyer and Vazirani "suggest they can't yet really make that claim".

But the company points to ongoing benchmarking of its machines by Google and cites other academic papers from recent months that support their case.

Mr Brownell comments: "How many trillions have been invested in classical computing? How many innovations and iterations of hardware since John Von Neumann and the Bletchley Park folks?

"How much algorithm work and research around software and applications and compilers and efficiency? We've come up with something in 10 years that performs just as well, and maybe outperforms in some narrow cases that entire ecosystem."

Nasa and Google share time on a machine at the Ames Research Center in California

Geordie Rose told BBC News: "Scepticism implies a healthy and unbiased doubt about new technological capabilities or scientific advancements. Much of that has gone away as we've continued to advance our technology so far beyond what anyone else has done."

"The negativity against pioneering companies though comes from small but vocal groups concerned about losing access to funding, and from commercial competitors. I believe the former will go away once these folks realise that our success means more money for their basic science, not less."

D-Wave's next chip, consisting of 1,024-qubits, is currently undergoing calibration ahead of its planned release later this year. In addition to its aforementioned customers, D-Wave has others it won't name. The firm is now looking to expand into other potentially lucrative markets.

"As we get some more internal resources to support customers adequately, we would like to branch out into other areas like bioinformatics, energy exploration, finance," says Vern Brownell. "We know already there are huge applications in each of these areas for quantum computing."

Could the world of finance also benefit from quantum computing?

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden reveal that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been conducting "basic research" to determine whether it was possible to build a quantum computer that would be useful for cracking encrypted communications.

But D-Wave's quantum annealing approach isn't well suited to this application. Cryptanalysis is an area where researchers seem to agree that the logic gate model offers more promise.

Of the company's efforts, Alan Woodward says: "The engineering difficulties [of building quantum computers] are enormous, because of susceptibilities to interactions from the environment and so on. What Geordie said was - let's build what we can, instead of always thinking about things that are out of reach. And you've got to admire that.

"I suspect it's something that's helping to move on the state-of-the-art from an engineering perspective, even if it turns out not to be the ultimate shape of things to come."

Andrew Steane comments: "I'm gently pleased by their boldness, to have a go and make the thing.

"It's a bit like 'Make it and they will come'. They haven't quite got to 'they will come'. But they've made something."

Africa’s Middle Class Is at the Crossroads - TIME

http://time.com/90621/nigeria-missing-girls/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Rana Foroohar @RanaForoohar
 

May 7, 2014

    

People holding signs take part in a protest demanding the release of abducted secondary school girls from the remote village of Chibok, in Lagos, May 5, 2014.Akintunde Akinleye—Reuters

Nigeria's 8% growth and 233 missing girls pinpoint the continent's challenges

The World Economic Forum’s annual Africa meeting is starting today in Abuja, Nigeria. The story here was supposed to be an optimistic one–last week, the World Bank upgraded the country’s GDP numbers by 89 %, making it the number one largest economy in Africa. Yet the fact that there are still 233 missing girls that have been abducted from their homes in the northeast of the country by the Islamic radical group known as Boko Haram is casting a large shadow on that story. Standard & Poor’s rating agency recently downgraded the country’s credit based on rising terrorism (a car bomb last week outside Abuja, the second in recent weeks, killed 19 people), and corruption (the central bank head was put on suspension a few weeks ago after $20 billion was found unaccounted for in the Treasury).

On the shuttle buses and in the halls of the WEF meetings here in Abuja, I hear Western business people recalibrating their notions of political risk in this country, and fretting about whether a country that can’t keep girls safe in their schools can turn itself into the sort of middle class consumption society that everyone here hopes it can.

A big part of the problem has been misleading statements, delays and half-hearted efforts on the part of government. President Goodluck recently told local media that the government was doing “everything it can,” including taking help from the U.S, which has offered up a counter-terrorism team to track the abductors. But the general feeling amongst participants here at the WEF is that the lack of urgency around the issue represents the failure of government to provide the sort of basic security that is crucial to both African growth, and Western investment.

“There’s a good news story and a bad news story here,” says Rajiv Shah, the administrator of USAID, here attending the WEF meeting in Abuja. “The good news is that Nigeria is thriving economically. But the bad news is that this [incident with the girls] cuts to the heart of the continuing problems with safety and security here. Boko Haram has displaced 500,000 people in northern Nigeria. The president has instructed Secretary Kerry that we will do everything we can to help.”

Yet at the end of the day, the impetus for managing the crisis has to come from Nigerian leaders themselves–and so far, most seem much more interested in discussing foreign direct investment and GDP growth and privatization of the country’s various industries rather than security, and particularly the missing girls. But the two are linked. Research shows that countries don’t rise economically unless they can assure education and economic empowerment for women. Until Nigeria can protect its school children, it may find inclusive growth illusive.

Your Airfare Is a Bunch of Lies - TIME

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• Bill Saporito @bilsap
 

May 21, 2014

    

And the Department of Transportation wants to do something about it

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The Department of Transportation (DOT) has upped the ante in the battle over making the total cost of an airline trip transparent. And it may be taking on Congress in the process.

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DOT is proposing a rule that would force carriers to disclose upfront the fees for the first checked bag, second checked bag, one carry-on item, and advance seat assignment. Since so much travel booking has shifted to online sites, DOT also wants to extend the definition of a ticket agent to include such aggregator sites such as Kayak or Google so that they too have to disclose these fees when consumers click on flights and fares. Additionally, the agency wants travel sites to come clean about any deals they have with the carriers that give some airlines preferred treatment, such as being at the top of the list. “Knowledge is power, and our latest proposal helps ensure consumers have clear and accurate information when choosing among air transportation options,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in a statement.

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DOT’s latest attempt to bring more clarity is a direct clash with a bill introduced in March by Pennsylvania Congressman Bill Shuster called the Transparent Airfares Act of 2014. Contrary to the title, though, the bill would trump existing DOT rules about transparency and instead allow airlines to advertise “base” fares. That is, “excluding government-imposed taxes and fees.” The bill’s proponents say it allows passengers to see exactly what the airlines are charging them, before the government adds its take.

That’s not the case, according to some passenger rights groups, such as the Business Travel Coalition, who argue that the legislation would undo regulations that DOT put in place in 2011 that forced airlines and ticket agents to post fares that included all mandatory fees and taxes. To passenger advocates, an airfare is what actually comes out of your pocket at the end of the transaction; how it’s divided up doesn’t really matter. DOT clearly agrees with that point of view. According to a spokesperson: “The full-fare advertising rule in the “Consumer II” regulation went into effect on October 24, 2011. We have no complaint category or subcategory for “air fare transparency,” but consumers have consistently confirmed that advertising of prices below the total cost of travel causes confusion. DOT’s full fare advertising rule requires airlines to state the entire price to be paid by a consumer but the carrier remains free to describe the charges included within the single total price such as government taxes and carrier fees (e.g., fuel surcharges).”

The clashing rules and legislation are both a response to the ongoing trend by the carriers to “unbundle” airfare pricing while at the same time offering premium price services such as early boarding or extra frequent flier points. Unbundling allows the carriers to set a price for a seat, and then to start adding fees: for checked bags, overhead space, roomier or preferred seats. DOT is responding to a rising chorus of complaints by passengers about hidden, or at least unanticipated, fees that drive up the final price they pay to travel. Although you can find these fees on most airlines’ web sites, they are not necessarily being featured.

The new regulations would also require smaller carriers such as Spirit to report their flight operations stats such as on time arrivals and departures. These ultra-low cost carriers (ULCCs) are growing fast, but they are currently under the reporting limit since that they represent less than 1% of domestic scheduled passenger revenue. DOT is dropping that threshold to .5%, which will capture the ULCCs. The agency also wants to require large travel agents to respond promptly to complaints and to let passengers place a 24-hour hold on a quoted fare without payment and be able to cancel without penalty if the reservation is made a week or more prior to departure date. The agency also wants to require carriers and ticket agents to disclose any code-share arrangements on initial itinerary displays on their websites—although most already do so.

These new rules changes, if they stick, will certainly give passengers a better picture of what they’re buying when they book a flight. But until that happens—and it won’t be before 2015—it’s safe to assume that quoted fare you see isn’t necessarily what you are going to pay. That’s why it may take some extra digging when you are trying to compare prices; make sure you understand all the fees you are likely to pay. Because if you are expecting to pay the quoted fare, you are going to be disappointed

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• Inc.
 

7:41 AM ET

    

This post is in partnership with Inc., which offers useful advice, resources and insights to entrepreneurs and business owners. The article below was originally published atInc.com.

The loftiest goal I ever set in the early stages of my professional career was to become a Navy SEAL. Achieving that milestone gave me a new perspective and set the foundation for the rest of my life. Nothing seemed too far from my grasp.

The first six months of training, called Basis Underwater Demolition/SEAL, is designed to identify those not solely committed to the mission of becoming a Navy SEAL, separate them from the herd, and force them to quit. Unless you quickly identify what you personally need to be successful, you will fail. Here are 11 importanttactics I learned during that journey that I use every day in the constant pursuit of personal and professional success.

1. Get the simple things right.

During training, Sunday was always depressing, because you knew the inevitable torture that Monday would bring. Monday was inspection day. To be successful as a SEAL, your attention to detail must be unwavering. So you start with the little things, like making your bed and cleaning the floors. I used to keep my bed impeccably made and sleep on top of the covers with a sleeping bag. If everything wasn’t perfect, you paid for it. And sometimes when it was perfect, you paid anyway. The lesson: If you can’t get the simple things right, you can’t expect to successfully tackle more daunting tasks.

2. Set both realistic and unrealistic goals.

Successful people are relentless goal setters. They break down larger milestones into smaller, more achievable tasks. One of the most unrealistic goals a SEAL candidate can set is completing Hell Week. You don’t sleep for a week. You run countless miles with boats, logs, and backpacks. You swim dozens of miles in the frigid ocean. You run the obstacle course daily and do more pushups and pull-ups than you can count. All while battling second-stage hypothermia, sores, and often fractures. Some students quit just minutes into Hell Week. You can’t allow yourself to imagine what the end will look like. So you make–and achieve–one small goal at a time and pray for the sun to come up the next day. A series of near-term realistic goals will help you get closer to your big audacious ones.

3. Work hard.

This one seems obvious, but many people underestimate the level of effort it takes to be successful and achieve aggressive goals. It astonishes me that some of the guys showing up to SEAL training put no real time or effort into preparation. If you don’t work hard preparing for potential success, you won’t change that behavior when things get really tough.

4. Get others to work with you.

A SEAL training class is broken down into boat crews of seven guys each: three on either side of the boat and a coxswain in the rear steering. During the first phase of training, you take the boats out through the surf and paddle miles up and down the beach every day. I was in a winter class, where the swells can be up to 10 feet or more. It takes every man digging in and paddling hard just to get through the surf zone without getting tossed upside down. When setting goals and pursuing success, you must sometimes lead and get others to paddle with you. You can’t do it all alone. The minute you realize that you don’t know everything and need help along the way, the better off you will be.

5. Don’t make excuses.

Successful people don’t make excuses for failure or shortcomings. They acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses and seek feedback from trusted advisers. The longer you sit around making excuses, the further you will drift from the possibility of achieving your goals.

6. Don’t underestimate others.

One of the most fascinating things about SEAL training is that out of the couple hundred guys who start a training class, you could never hand pick the 30 or so who will graduate. Rarely is it the Rambo types who make it. Usually they are the first to go. Underestimating people, whether peers or competitors, is one of the worst things you can do. People who go far in life measure others by qualities such as integrity and strength of heart. Empower those around you, and you will be surprised by the outcome.

7. Be willing to fail.

When entering this phase of my life, I knew that statistically, the odds were not in my favor. I also knew that if I didn’t try, I would never forgive myself. I decided that I would rather try and fail than be the guy who says, “I was thinking about trying that.” You simply can’t look at life through a lens of fear. If you take a calculated risk and fail, at the very least you have a valuable learning experience. Get back up. Dust off. And never, ever, be out of the fight.

8. Embrace the repercussions of your actions.

On your path to success, you will make mistakes. One of my early mistakes was slacking off on my pushups after the obstacle course during the first day of the third phase of training. An instructor was looking through the rearview mirror while sitting in the truck. He was counting to see if I did the required 50. I decided to do 30-ish. That mistake earned me a spot with the “cheaters” the following week while at the shooting range. Each day, before we started, during lunch, and between drills, the cheaters would line up and sprint to the top of a nearby mountain in full gear. If you failed to make the cutoff time, you ran it again. It was torture. But the week after, I miraculously cut my four-mile run time by three minutes. Learn from your mistakes and turn the consequences into something positive.

9. Don’t back down.

My favorite passage from the Navy SEAL creed reads: “I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.” Enough said.

10. Laugh when you want to cry.

Staying positive seems like an obvious trait for successful people, but it’s easier said than done. Your character is defined by what you do when things get tough. During Hell Week, one of the fun tasks is called “steel pier.” After spending some time in the cold water of San Diego Bay, you strip down to your undershorts and lie down on the freezing metal pier while the instructors spray you with hoses. Your body convulses uncontrollably as it reaches stage-two hypothermia. But the guys who found the strength to laugh (partly because of delirium) during this event were the ones standing proud at graduation. When things get rough and are out of your control, don’t forget to laugh.

11. Make sacrifices.

Success comes with sacrifice. Let selfish ways fall by the wayside, and know that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. The most successful people in the world have made significant sacrifices along the way. To become a SEAL, you give up comfort, and the discomfort only increases the further you go. But you get used to it, because you know what you are doing is worth it.

The path to success is paved with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but you can’t lose heart. Stay strong, be humble, and lean on others for support when necessary.