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Democratic presidential hopefulMike Bloomberg is slated to do an interview with civil rights icon the Rev. Al Sharpton on Sunday amid scrutiny of the former New York City mayor'spast support for "stop and frisk."

Bloomberg's interviewwill air at 5 p.m. Sunday on Sharptons Politics Nation program on MSNBC.

The former mayorhas faced a wave of criticism recently after resurfaced comments showed him defending the stop-and-frisk police practice, which studies have shown was ineffective in reducing crime and overwhelmingly targeted men of color.

"The way you should get the guns out of the kids' hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them," Bloomberg said in unearthedaudio from 2015.

Ninety-five percent of your murders murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops," he added. "They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. Thats true in New York, its true in virtually every city."

The unsurfaced comments led to a spike in criticism from activists and calls from other 2020 Democrats that Bloombergexplain the remarks.

Bloomberghasapologized for his past support for the law enforcement practice andrepeated his mea culpa earlier this month.

By the time I left office, I cut it back by 95%, but I should've done it faster and sooner," he said in a statement. "I regret that and I have apologized and I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities."

Several presidential rivals went after Bloombergduring the latest Democratic debate in Las Vegas this week, with former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenButtigieg campaign claims 'irregularities' in Nevada caucuses Poll: Sanders leads 2020 Democratic field with 28 percent, followed by Warren and Biden More than 6 in 10 expect Trump to be reelected: poll MORE ripping the stop-and-friskprogram as "abhorrent" and Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenPoll: Sanders leads 2020 Democratic field with 28 percent, followed by Warren and Biden More than 6 in 10 expect Trump to be reelected: poll Sanders has wide leads in two of three battleground states: survey MORE (D-Mass.) callingBloomberg's apology inadequate.

Ive sat, Ive apologized, Ive asked for forgiveness, but the bottom line is that we stopped too many people and we got to make sure we do something about criminal justice in thiscountry,the former mayor saidduring the debate Wednesday.

Sharpton has criticized Bloomberg in the past over the practice and said this week he would have to repair the damage caused by stop and frisk, while noting that other candidates have baggage as well.

I also dont want to see him as a leaf that the other candidates dump some of their racial baggage, he said on MSNBC earlier this week. I want to know what Bernies gonna say about the vote he did for the [1994] crime bill, where people went to jail.

"No matter his reason for voting for it, it was a law that incarcerated people. Joe Biden wrote it," Bloomberg added before noting that Sen. Amy KlobucharAmy Jean KlobucharPoll: Sanders leads 2020 Democratic field with 28 percent, followed by Warren and Biden Sanders has wide leads in two of three battleground states: survey Democrats: It's Trump's world, and we're just living in it MORE (D-Minn.) is facing scrutiny over her past as a prosecutor. All of them have racial baggage.

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Bloomberg to do interview with Al Sharpton | TheHill - The Hill

WILMINGTON, Del., Feb. 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --On Monday, February 24th at 6pm, civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Christopher Bullock will be hosting a free dinner for Delaware residents in honor of Black History Month, emceed by local Pastor Dale Dennis II of Hoyt Memorial CME. The event is sponsored by CPBD.

The pastors will be leading a discussion on the lack of diversity on Delaware's courts and its adverse effects on all of the state's residents. The discussion, at the Kingswood Community Center in Wilmington, will also focus on what can be done to "repair the institutional neglect of people of color in the Delaware," as Reverend Sharpton stated in his first advocacy visit to the state in October.

The dinner comes following the Delaware State Senate's denial of Reverend Al Sharpton the opportunity to testifyon the issue of diversity in the state's judicial system at a Chancery Court Chancellor's nomination hearing. In the past several months, Reverend Sharpton has visited Delaware calling for progress on the issue and even penned a letter to leading law firm Skadden Arps calling for elite firms to do their part in advancing people of color in the legal industry. While people of color make up over 60% of Delaware's prison population, only four justices who serve on the three highest courts in Delaware are people of color.

Said Reverend Sharpton, "to say I was disappointed the Delaware State Senate would not even agree to hear testimony from myself on the matter of judicial diversity would be an understatement. But our voices cannot be silenced and I am excited to be joining my colleagues and fellow civil rights champions in the First State to celebrate Black History Month and rally around our cause: Delaware needs more black and brown judges and we need them now."

On Monday, February 24th at 6pm, civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Christopher Bullock will be hosting a free dinner for Delaware residents in honor of Black History Month, emceed by local Pastor Dale Dennis II of Hoyt Memorial CME.

Contact: Mary Urban, mu@adeoadvocacy.com

SOURCE Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware

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Civil Rights Leader Reverend Al Sharpton and Delaware Pastors to Host Black History Month Celebration and Dinner in Support of Diversifying Delaware's...

Former Vice President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, D.C., March 30, 2016(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Its axiomatic among progressives and the mainstream media that the country is awash in racism and white supremacy.

The entertainment industry is obsessed with racism/white supremacy. So too is the educational establishment. More than a half century after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, racism and white supremacy apparently permeate every corner of the country. Indeed, according to the New York Times 1619 Project, racism is in the very DNA of America.

So virulent and widespread is racism and white supremacy today that Democratic presidential candidates call for rooting out the plague every chance they get. Speaking at a recent event hosted by Al Sharpton, former Vice President Joe Biden said: We have a lot to root out, but most of all the systemic racism that most of us whites dont like to acknowledge even exists. Theres something we have to admit not you, me, white America has to admit theres still a systemic racism. Biden wasnt asked why he seemingly hadnt made a dent in rooting out systemic racism in his 36 years as a senator or eight years as Barack Obamas VP. After all, he has been a member in good standing of The System for a long time.

Elizabeth Warren also wants to root out systemic racism: We must recognize the systemic discrimination that infects our country, and we must work actively and deliberately to root it out and set us on a better path. Racism is everywhere, affects everything. Warren maintains that race has totally permeated our justice system and our crisis of environmental injustice is the result of decades of discrimination and environmental racism. Given that racism permeates nearly every facet of society, even the environment, its impressive that Warren willingly subjected herself to the scourge by claiming shes Native American.

Pete Buttigieg maintains that We are by no means even half way done dealing with systemic racism in this country. He asserts that systemic racism and white supremacy in particularis the force that is most likely to destroy America. His website proposes a comprehensive and intentional dismantling of racist structures and systems.

What, specifically, are these racist structures and systems? How about a few concrete examples supported by evidence? No one in the media seems the least bit interested in asking. Its simply taken as given that whole institutions, structures, and systems in this country are racist and white supremacist. Asking for examples is, itself, racist. Or, at the very least, an embarrassing demonstration of terminal unwokeness. Racial disparities are presumptively equated with disparate treatment.

Racism and white supremacy became particularly acute, of course, after November 2016. Nearly every racial malady since then has been attributed to Donald Trump and his hordes of white supremacist minions. Its curious, however, that there hasnt been the expected spike in the data related to racism. Just the opposite. For example, the number of race discrimination charges filed with the EEOC reached a 25-year high of 35,890 in 2010 during the Obama administration, compared with 23,976 filed (merely filed, not even determined to have probable cause) in 2019. Similarly, the FBI reports that 7,120 hate crimes were committed in 2018, fewer than even a decade ago, when the U.S. population was millions smaller and far fewer agencies were reporting hate crimes.

These data points dont necessarily disprove Democratic/media assertions that racism and white supremacy abound. But its a far easier lift than proving racism and white supremacy are ubiquitous.

Not to worry. Theres at least one clear and unequivocal example of systemic racism in America today, but youll never hear Democratic candidates utter a word about it: the staggering racial preferences awarded by colleges to black and Hispanic applicants over white and Asian applicants. Systemic racism is OK, provided its approved by progressives, and theyre running the system.

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Rooting Out Systemic Racism and White Supremacy - National Review

Concerns that quantum computing could place current encryption techniques at risk have been around for some time.

But now cybersecurity startup Active Cypher has built a password-hacking quantum computer to demonstrate that the dangers are very real.

Using easily available parts costing just $600, Active Cyphers founder and CTO, Dan Gleason, created a portable quantum computer dubbed QUBY (named after qubits, the basic unit of quantum information). QUBY runs recently open-sourced quantum algorithms capable of executing within a quantum emulator that can perform cryptographic cracking algorithms. Calculations that would have otherwise taken years on conventional computers are now performed in seconds on QUBY.

Gleason explains, "After years of foreseeing this danger and trying to warn the cybersecurity community that current cybersecurity protocols were not up to par, I decided to take a week and move my theory to prototype. I hope that QUBY can increase awareness of how the cyberthreats of quantum computing are not reserved to billion-dollar state-sponsored projects, but can be seen on much a smaller, localized scale."

The concern is that quantum computing will lead to the sunset of AES-256 (the current encryption standard), meaning all encrypted files could one day be decrypted. "The disruption that will come about from that will be on an unprecedented, global scale. It's going to be massive," says Gleason. Modelled after the SADM, a man-portable nuclear weapon deployed in the 1960s, QUBY was downsized so that it fits in a backpack and is therefore untraceable. Low-level 'neighborhood hackers' have already been using portable devices that can surreptitiously swipe credit card information from an unsuspecting passerby. Quantum compute emulating devices will open the door for significantly more cyberthreats.

In response to the threat, Active Cypher has developed advanced dynamic cyphering encryption that is built to be quantum resilient. Gleason explains that, "Our encryption is not based on solving a mathematical problem. It's based on a very large, random key which is used in creating the obfuscated cyphertext, without any key information within the cyphertext, and is thus impossible to be derived through prime factorization -- traditional brute force attempts which use the cyphertext to extract key information from patterns derived from the key material."

Active Cypher's completely random cyphertext cannot be deciphered using even large quantum computers since the only solution to cracking the key is to try every possible combination of the key, which will produce every known possible output of the text, without knowledge of which version might be the correct one. "In other words, you'll find a greater chance of finding a specific grain of sand in a desert than cracking this open," says Gleason.

Active Cypher showcased QUBY in early February at Ready -- an internal Microsoft conference held in Seattle. The prototype will also be presented at RSA in San Francisco later this month.

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The $600 quantum computer that could spell the end for conventional encryption - BetaNews

Google reported a remarkable breakthrough towards the end of 2019. The company claimed to have achieved something called quantum supremacy, using a new type of quantum computer to perform a benchmark test in 200 seconds. This was in stark contrast to the 10,000 years that would supposedly have been needed by a state-of-the-art conventional supercomputer to complete the same test.

Despite IBMs claim that its supercomputer, with a little optimisation, could solve the task in a matter of days, Googles announcement made it clear that we are entering a new era of incredible computational power.

Yet with much less fanfare, there has also been rapid progress in the development of quantum communication networks, and a master network to unite them all called the quantum internet. Just as the internet as we know it followed the development of computers, we can expect the quantum computer to be accompanied by the safer, better synchronised quantum internet.

Like quantum computing, quantum communication records information in what are known as qubits, similar to the way digital systems use bits and bytes. Whereas a bit can only take the value of zero or one, a qubit can also use the principles of quantum physics to take the value of zero and one at the same time. This is what allows quantum computers to perform certain computations very quickly. Instead of solving several variants of a problem one by one, the quantum computer can handle them all at the same time.

These qubits are central to the quantum internet because of a property called entanglement. If two entangled qubits are geographically separated (for instance, one qubit in Dublin and the other in New York), measurements of both would yield the same result. This would enable the ultimate in secret communications, a shared knowledge between two parties that cannot be discovered by a third. The resulting ability to code and decode messages would be one of the most powerful features of the quantum internet.

Commercial applications

There will be no shortage of commercial applications for these advanced cryptographic mechanisms. The world of finance, in particular, looks set to benefit as the quantum internet will lead to enhanced privacy for online transactions and stronger proof of the funds used in the transaction.

Recently, at the CONNECT Centre in Trinity College Dublin, we successfully implemented an algorithm that could achieve this level of security. That this took place during a hackathon a sort of competition for computer programmers shows that even enthusiasts without detailed knowledge of quantum physics can create some of the building blocks that will be needed for the quantum internet. This technology wont be confined to specialist university departments, just as the original internet soon outgrew its origins as a way to connect academics around the world.

But how could this quantum internet be built anytime soon when we currently can only build very limited quantum computers? Well, the devices in the quantum internet dont have to be completely quantum in nature, and the network wont require massive quantum machines to handle the communication protocols.

One qubit here and there is all a quantum communication network needs to function. Instead of replacing the current infrastructure of optical fibres, data centres and base stations, the quantum internet will build on top of and make maximum use of the existing, classical internet.

With such rapid progress being made, quantum internet technology is set to shape the business plans of telecom companies in the near future. Financial institutions are already using quantum communication networks to make inter-bank transactions safer. And quantum communication satellites are up and running as the first step to extending these networks to a global scale.

The pipes of the quantum internet are effectively being laid as you read this. When a big quantum computer is finally built, it can be plugged into this network and accessed on the cloud, with all the privacy guarantees of quantum cryptography.

What will the ordinary user notice when the enhanced cryptography of the quantum internet becomes available? Very little, in all likelihood. Cryptography is like waste management: if everything works well, the customer doesnt even notice.

In the constant race of the codemakers and codebreakers, the quantum internet wont just prevent the codebreakers taking the lead. It will move the race track into another world altogether, with a significant head start for the codemakers. With data becoming the currency of our times, the quantum internet will provide stronger security for a new valuable commodity.

Harun iljak, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Complex Systems Science for Telecommunications, Trinity College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

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Quantum Internet: The Technology That Could Change Everything? - The National Interest Online