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Quantum computing offers incredible computing power and is set to transform many areas such as research. However, it also represents a threat to current security systems as cracking passwords and encryption keys becomes much easier.

So quantum is a security threat, but is there a solution to making systems safer? We spoke to David Williams, CEO of symmetric encryption specialist Arqit, to find out.

BN: Why are current encryption techniques no longer adequate?

DW: First, public key cryptography was not designed for a hyper-connected world, it wasn't designed for an Internet of Things, it's unsuitable for the nature of the world that we're building. The need to constantly refer to certification providers for authentication or verification is fundamentally unsuitable. And of course the mathematical primitives at the heart of that are definitely compromised by quantum attacks so you have a system which is crumbling and is certainly dead in a few years time.

A lot of the attacks we've seen result from certifications being compromised, certificates expiring, certificates being stolen and abused.

But with the sort of computational power available from a quantum computer blockchain is also at risk. If you make a signature bigger to guard against it being cracked the block size becomes huge and the whole blockchain grinds to a halt.

BN: Where did you start to look for a solution?

DW: The person who solves this will become very successful, so in 2017 we began an innovation journey. The tech that we had back then most definitively did not work, it didn't solve the problem. What we now have is a product which is called Quantum Cloud. It's just a a lightweight software agent that's 200 lines of code that can be delivered from the cloud and it can be downloaded into any device. We can put it into an IoT sensor, or a battleship, it doesn't matter, it's the same software for all devices.

What that software does is it creates keys for groups of devices that want to communicate securely, so it could be two or 20 or 2000 devices, and they all undergo a process whereby they create a brand new symmetric encryption key, which they then use to communicate securely. We know that symmetric encryption key is computationally secure. A symmetric encryption key is just a long random number, and even a quantum computer in future will not be able to crack it in less than billions of years. Symmetric encryption keys have been used for decades, delivered by human courier, and therefore the algorithm to use such keys is already built into the world's software systems which means there's no great change required for the world to adopt the use of this technology.

We didn't invent symmetric encryption keys, we invented a way to distribute them securely.

BN: Can you give us an idea of how this works?

DW: Imagine two end points in in London and New York who want to create a secure channel. Each device talks to a data center in its city. In each location there are Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) which have identical sets of the encryption key data. That data is put there by 'satellites' which use a quantum protocol to deliver that information in a method that we can demonstrate is provably secure.

Think of the data centers as buckets, three times a day the satellites throw some random numbers into the buckets and all data centers end up with an identical bucket full of identical sets of random information. So, the endpoints talk to the data centers, which have a conversation and they agree on some information or clues to send in common to the end points, without actually knowing what that information is. In a very clever mashup of those clues, and the existing data that they have on their devices, the end points then create simultaneously a brand new random number.

BN: Is this available today?

DW: The satellite technology is still a couple of years away, currently the root source of random numbers is delivered to data centers by a random number generator in a data center, through some terrestrial mechanisms, which is regarded by our customers as secure today. It's not quantum safe yet, but the network gets upgraded in two years time when the quantum satellites launch and the whole thing becomes quantum safe.

BN: How will it tie in with a zero trust world?

DW: Conventionally with satellite quantum encryption, you can either be zero trust or you can be global, you can't be both. Well that makes the whole thing a bit pointless because the internet's global. Our technology is simultaneously zero trust and global. So, in our protocol the satellite is never trusted with the key, an individual receiver is never trusted with the key. It is a zero trust system. But secondly, the endpoint software adds another layer of zero-trust functionality. The data centers never have the key, the key is never created somewhere else and distributed. The key is created locally on the device, and therefore there is no other device in the network which we're trusting with the key. Therefore, the software protocol is also zero trust.

BN: Will the end user logging into their bank or VPN see any difference?

DW: It's unlikely that a consumer will ever see the operation of our new software, you won't see it sitting on your device called 'Arqit's product', it will be baked into other people's applications and it will be a seamless experience for the average customer.

BN: Are there wider applications for the technology?

DW: One of the things we're most excited about is JADC2 (Joint All-Domain Command and Control), which is basically the military Internet of Things. This involves lots of devices that need to operate in dynamic environments. You can't possibly give every single device that you might feasibly want to communicate with a set of keys to cope with every possible scenario its simply impossible. And in JADC2 we have to rely currently on old fashioned public key cryptography.

But if every device can just download the lightweight quantum cloud agents, then as soon as you agree that drone needs to talk to that satellite, which needs to talk to that other commander, they just set up brand new key dynamically in real time. We can create unbreakable and trustless keys in the moment that they needed and we can change the access rights.

Of course the same problem is also solved in the enterprise and for consumer devices. So yes, the application of our technology is everything, everywhere. There is no application we've ever thought of where the technology can't make things stronger and simpler.

Photo Credit: The World in HDR / Shutterstock.com

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Why quantum computing is a security threat and how to defend against it [Q&A] - BetaNews

As the global quantum computing market is forecast to reach over EUR 50 billion by 2030, Finnish companies have started cooperation to capture the business opportunities emerging from advances in quantum technologies.

OP Financial Group, Accenture, CSC IT Center for Science, and globally recognized quantum technology companies Bluefors and IQM are the first to join BusinessQ, a VTT-coordinated network to support businesses in the adoption and development of quantum technologies and solutions. The companies will work together to build a business roadmap for Finland around the opportunities of quantum technologies.

Bringing together companies and organisations with quantum expertise, as well as potential end-users, BusinessQ works to position Finnish businesses to the global forefront of adapting new quantum-enabled technologies.

Developments in quantum technologies will create new opportunities for Finnish companies. At VTT, we have decades of experience in turning emerging technologies into viable business, and now we want to foster an active community and support Finnish industries and society in capturing the benefits of quantum technologies early on, says VTTsErja Turunen, Executive Vice President, Digital technologies.

BusinessQ wants to grow and attract new companies from different industries to join the network. Cooperation and dialogue can benefit both companies and the quantum research community as it provides a better understanding of the different industry challenges that quantum-based technologies could tackle in the future.

Discussions with our first BusinessQ partners have shown that Finnish businesses have curiosity, ambition, and an open approach to quantum technologies. We are eager to welcome more companies from different industries and want to build an active business community around the opportunities of quantum technologies,explainsHimadri MajumdarManager of Quantum Programmes at VTT.

Finland also has an active research community that fosters innovation around quantum technologies. In April 2021, Aalto University, Helsinki University, and VTT announced InstituteQ: The Finnish Quantum Institute aims at raising the readiness of Finnish society for the disruptive potential and implications quantum technologies will have for society and the economy at large. In this context, it coordinates operations that foster collaboration in research, education, innovation and infrastructure in the field of quantum technologies. BusinessQs activities share the mission of InstituteQ in strengthening Finlands growing quantum ecosystem. VTT also hosts Finlands first quantum computer that is being built in Espoo in partnership with IQM.

This article was first published on September 22 by CSC.

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CSC-IT: Finnish businesses start cooperation to capture the benefits of quantum technologies - Science Business

The system will let researchers perform calculations and solve problems that current supercomputers cannot handle.

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Backed by a multi-million-dollar federal grant, a research team from three major universities will soon start working on a pioneering supercomputing system that allows scientists and engineers to align its processors, accelerators, memory and other hardware components to best serve their needs.

This innovative system will operate increasingly complex levels of software while sidestepping the hardware bottlenecks that often hinder high-level computations. This system will let researchers perform calculations and solve problems that current supercomputers cannot handle.

On Oct. 1, 2021, researchers from Texas A&M University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) will begin collaborating on a prototype for what they call the Accelerating Computing for Emerging Sciences (ACES) system.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will provide $5 million for ACESs development and an additional $1 million per year over five years to pay for system operation and support.

Texas A&M Interim Vice President for Research Jack Baldaulf expressed gratitude to the NSF for its substantial investment in the ACES project. We are thankful to NSF for the opportunity to lead such an important initiative and to our Texas A&M HPRC staff and collaborators at UT Austin and UIUC for making this a successful effort, Baldauf said. Computational science is critical to our national needs and the ACES platform will not only advance research but also help educate the future workforce in this area.

The teams goal is to develop an all-inclusive system that will serve researchers across a wide range of scholarly disciplines and computer skills, according to Honggao Liu, executive director of Texas A&Ms High Performance Research Computing (HPRC) and the projects principal investigator.

These disciplines include artificial intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, health population informatics, genomics and bioinformatics, human and agricultural life sciences, oil-and-gas simulations, new-materials design, climate modeling, molecular dynamics, quantum-computing architectures, imaging, smart and connected societies, geosciences and quantum chemistry.

The ACES system will support the national research community through coordination systems supported by the NSF, Liu said. In this way, the ACES system will provide invaluable support to cutting-edge projects across a broad spectrum of research disciplines in the nation. ACES will also leverage HPRCs efforts that promote science and broaden participation in computing at the K-12, collegiate and professional levels to have a transformative impact nationally by focusing on training, education and outreach.

Researchers should think of ACES as a cyber-buffet, said Timothy M. Cockerill, director of user services, TACC at UT Austin, and a co-principal investigator on the ACES project. Theyll be able to essentially build the custom environment they require on a per job basis and not be constrained to the contents of a physical server node, Cockerill said.

ACES will open new avenues to scientific advancement, said Shaowen Wang, head of the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, professor at UIUC and a co-principal investigator on the ACES project. Exciting advances on many science frontiers will become possible by harnessing the hybrid computing resources and highly adaptable framework offered byACESto enable increasingly complex scientific workflows driven by geospatial big data and artificial intelligence, Wang said.

Also serving as co-principal investigators are Lisa M. Perez, associate director for advanced computing enablement, and Dhruva Chakravorty, associate director for user services and research, both from HPRC at Texas A&M.

Research that generates breakthrough discoveries will require highly advanced computer designs that can meet the challenge, Texas A&M Senior Associate Vice President for Research Costas N. Georghiades said. With the increasing complexity of computational problems in the big-data era we live in, it is no longer sufficient to use traditional supercomputers which rely only on optimizing the software, Georghiades said. The ACES system will also be able to adapt hardware resources on the fly to tackle complex computational tasks more efficiently. Texas A&M is proud to lead this effort in collaboration with our university partners at UT Austin and Illinois.

Technical description

ACES leverages an innovative composable framework via PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) Gen5 on Intels upcoming Sapphire Rapid (SPR) processors to offer a rich accelerator testbed consisting of Intel Ponte Vecchio (PVC) GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), Intel FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), NEC Vector Engines, NextSilicon co-processors and Graphcore IPUs (Intelligence Processing Units).

The accelerators are coupled with Intel Optane memory and DDN Lustre storage interconnected with Mellanox NDR 400Gbps InfiniBand to support workflows that benefit from optimized devices. ACES will allow applications and workflows to dynamically integrate the different accelerators, memory and in-network computing protocols to glean new insights by rapidly processing large volumes of data and provide researchers with a unique platform to produce complex hybrid programming models for effectively supporting calculations that were not feasible before.

About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the worlds leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M generated annual expenditures of more than $1.131 billion in fiscal year 2020. Texas A&M ranked in the top 25 of the most recent National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development survey based on expenditures of more than $952 million in fiscal year 2019. Texas A&Ms research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental, and applied contributions resulting in economic benefits to the state, nation, and world. research.tamu.edu

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Trailblazing Supercomputer Will Enable Scientists And Engineers To Optimize Its Hardware To Support Groundbreaking Research - Texas A&M University...

Kim Komando| Special to USA TODAY

There are more features and tricks hiding in your Mac or PC than most people will ever know. You can do even more if you know the right software to download.

If youre relying on your computers built-in spell check to catch all your grammar mistakes, for example, its time to upgrade. Here are five stellar options to make you sound smarter. I have used one for 223 weeks straight.

With everything else we shell out cash for online, you dont always want to pay for programs. If you need to save a little cash, Ive got your back. First, check this list of simple ways to save money on streaming, cable and internet bills each month.

Round out the savings with this list of full-featured programs that work just like popular software everyone else uses:

When it comes to productivity software, Microsoft Office is the gold standard. Unfortunately, it's also expensive. Yes, there are some ways to get a discount if you genuinely need the Microsoft version. Tap or click here for tricks to get it free or cheap.

A great no-cost alternative is LibreOffice. This open-source office suite is especially great because its creators continually update it. Youll get six programs, including Writer, Impress, and Calc, which work just like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, respectively.

LibreOffice allows you to edit documents created in the official MS Office and save new files in Office formats, too. Someone on the receiving end of your .docx file wont know you used a program other than Word to save it.

Tap or click here for direct download links for Mac and PC.

FreeOffice TextMaker is another solid Microsoft Office alternative. Its handy when you need to open .doc and .docx files. Unlike other free word processing programs, it offers a spell check feature in 58 languages. Like Word, you can insert tables, pictures, and drawings.

You can even create EPUB e-books. Thats convenient for aspiring authors who dont want to shell out cash for another program.

Tap or click here to download FreeOffice TextMaker.

Want more options? 7 free alternatives to Microsoft Windows

Another great offering from FreeOffice is PlanMaker, a free Excel alternative. Open and edit XLS and XLSX files from Excel or export your worksheets as PDFs.

It can go beyond the basics, too, with more than 430 computing functions. It comes loaded with templates compatible with Microsoft Excel 2019, too.

Tap or click here to download FreeOffice PlanMaker.

You can edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations for free with Google Drive, too. Tap or click for 15 tips and tricks power users rely on.

Designed for advanced users, GIMP is a professional photo editor almost identical to Adobe Photoshop. The open-source software has been around, and loved, since the 90s. Youll get access to many Photoshop tools, including advanced filters, text settings and layers.

And hey, you wont have to shell out $10 (or more) a month for Photoshop anymore.

GIMP is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Tap or click here for a direct download link and more info.

Sometimes you want a solid program without downloading anything. That's where Pixlr comes in. This photo editing software runs in your browser; its compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Pixlr includes advanced tools like drawing and photo filters, but its handy for easy cropping and resizing features, too. Unlike some other browser-based options, it opens nearly image format. That includes PSD (Photoshop documents), PXD, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG.

If you want to work on your smartphone, you can download a lightweight version of the program on iOS and Android. The mobile apps dont need much space or memory. Plus, you can instantly share your creations with your social media apps.

Tap or click here to find out why it's such an excellent option for beginners.

Canva is not your typical photo editor. Yes, you can crop photos, add text, or resize in a snap. What makes it shine are the countless templates you can use to create your own presentations, social media graphics, greeting cards, marketing materials, posters, and anything else you need.

Canva is super easy to use, too. Its a drag and drop, intuitive editor just about anyone will be able to navigate. You can sign up for a paid account to get access to premium images and templates. For basic use, though, a free account should give you everything you need.

Tap or click for a direct download link and more reasons to love Canva.

VLC is a free, open-source media player that plays almost every audio and video file format in existence. VLC even handles webcams and streaming content and can convert media from one format to another.

Not only is VLC powerful, but its also lightweight. It runs fast, and there are no ads. Love that. Its also simple to use.

To run a video or audio file, you can drag and drop a file into the open VLC program or open it under the Media tab. The player buttons are simple and are easily accessible at the bottom of the VLC window.

VLC runs on just about any platform, is open-source, and is frequently upgraded, unlike some free software. Tap or click here to download VLC.

Not only is audio track editing complex especially for beginners but the programs for this task can cost you an arm and a leg. Not so with Audacity, one of my favorite free programs.

It is easy to use once you get the hang of it. Even a beginner can pick up the process after a few minutes of watching tutorials on YouTube.

If youve never used Audacity and the name sounds familiar, there were news stories back in July claiming policy changes to the terms and conditions effectively made Audacity spyware. After reading the policy and the companys response, I am not concerned.

Tap or click here to edit music, podcasts, or other audio like a pro.

Windows Movie Maker was one of the most popular platforms people used for editing videos for a long time. Sadly, the native PC app kicked the bucket in 2017.

Many people moved on to expensive alternatives, like Adobe Premiere Pro or Vegas Pro. If you need to edit video on the cheap, try out DaVinci Resolve 17. As with any powerful editing software, there is a learning curve. This goes beyond just simple cropping.

Its available for Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems and allows you to make quick edits to your video clips or packages. DaVinci 17 uses artificial intelligence and smart detection technology to identify faces in clips and organize them automatically into smart folders.

It's powerful enough to knock out basic editing, color correction, and audio post-production, along with visual effects and motion graphics.

Tap or click here to download DaVinci and see more of what it can do.

Bonus Tip: How the government and companies buy your personal data

Check out my podcast Kim Komando Explains on Apple, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast player.

We think of our gadgets as helpful tools that make our lives easier, but they can also be turned against us. The data your devices collect is so valuable it could be used against you in a criminal trial, requested by the police, or even bought by the government through a data broker. I sit down with Bennett Cyphers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and he reveals all the secrets youre losing and which devices do the most stealing.

Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for my last name, Komando.

Learn about all the latest technology on theKim Komando Show, the nation's largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today's digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website atKomando.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.

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9 free software copycats that work better than the real expensive programs - USA TODAY

Here is a full guide on how to change the video aspect ratio on Windows 11/10 PC. The video aspect ratio is basically the proportion of width to height of a video. It determines how wide your videos are. It is not the resolution but the ratio of the width to height. Like, a video with an aspect ratio of 16:9 can be of 1920 px by 1080 px resolution. Now, if you want to change the aspect ratio of a video on your Windows 11/10 PC, this guide is for you. In this post, we are going to discuss methods to change the video aspect ratio on your computer. Let us check out now!

You can change the aspect ratio of a video using a free online tool. There are various tools available on the web that enable you to do that. Additionally, you can also use software to do that. We have discussed some online tools and software that can be used for modifying the aspect ratio of videos for free.

Here are the main methods to change the video aspect ratio on Windows 11/10:

Let us discuss the above methods in detail now!

The easiest way to change the aspect ratio of videos is to use an online tool. There are several free tools that allow you to change the video aspect ratio online in a web browser. Here are two good free online video aspect ratio changer tools that you can try:

Lets discuss these tools in detail now!

As the name suggests, OnlineConverter.com is a free online file converter tool. It lets you convert video and some other files. Along with converting video files, it also lets you resize them and change their aspect ratio according to your requirement. Let us discuss a dedicated step-by-step procedure to convert the aspect ratio of a video.

You can follow the below step to modify the video aspect ratio:

You will be able to download the resulting video when the processing is done.

This online tool can also be used to crop videos, merge videos, watermark videos, repair MP4 files, brighten videos, stabilize your videos, and more. You can use this handy tool here.

FileConverto is another file converter tool that also lets you change the video aspect ratio. You can find a lot of other tools on this website like Video Compressor, Video Joiner, Video Trimmer, Loop Video, and more. It also provides several audio, image, and PDF tools. It lets you change the video aspect ratio to fit Instagram, Instagram Story, IGTV, YouTube, Facebook/ Twitter Portrait, Facebook/ Twitter Landscape, or TV Standard.

Here are the main steps you can follow to convert the aspect ratio of videos online:

Try it here.

Read: Best free AVI to MP4 converter for Windows PC

Another method to change the video aspect ratio is to use free software. You can find plenty of software that let you convert the aspect ratio of videos on Windows 11/10. Some even let you change the video aspect ratio in bulk. Here are the free software that will let you change the aspect ratio of videos on Windows 11/10:

Now, let us talk about the above free software in detail!

XMedia Recode is a free batch video processor that lets you change the video aspect ratio on Windows. It can do a lot more like crop a video, flip/ rotate a video, watermark a video, blur videos, apply various filters, etc. To change the video aspect ratio, there is a very simple procedure you need to follow. Lets check it out.

Here are the main steps to change the video aspect ratio in bulk using this free software:

Let us discuss the above steps in detail!

Firstly, you need to download and install this free software on your PC, and then start it. It also provides a portable version that you can download, unzip, and then launch without installation.

Now, click on the Open Files button and add the source video files. Then, move to the Filters/Preview tab, and under the Resolution section, select the desired aspect ratio from 1:1, 3:2, 4:3, 11:9, 16:9, etc. You can also customize other parameters like aspect error, scaling mode, dithering algorithm, etc.

After that, go to the Format tab and customize the output format, output location, etc.

Finally, click on the Add to queue and then Encode button to start batch video processing.

Read: How to Resize a Video using Command-line with FFmpeg

As the name suggests, Free HD Video Converter is a free video converter using which you can also change the aspect ratio of input videos. It is very easy to use, plus it provides several handy features. Some of its features include crop, trim, color filters, merge, etc. Let us check out the steps of modifying the aspect ratio of videos below:

First, download and install Free HD Video Converter software on your PC. Now, launch the software.

Next, add an input video file. Then, click on the parameter Settings button to open up the window to customize output options.

After that, click on the Aspect Ratio drop-down option and select the desired output aspect ratio and press the OK button. You can select an aspect ratio from 4:3, 16:9, 37:20, and 47:20.

Finally, press the Run button and it will change the aspect ratio of the input video file.

You can download it from videoconverterfactory.com.

See: Best free Video to GIF maker software for Windows

Try AV Video Converter which is a batch video converter and can modify the aspect ratio of videos. You can add multiple videos and then change the aspect ratio for all the videos at once. Apart from that, it lets you modify video size, quality, and more.

To use it, download and install it on your PC. Then, open this software and add your videos files to it. Now, from the right panel, select the Aspect Ratio drop-down and choose the desired aspect ratio. After that, click on the Convert all tracks button to start processing your videos.

You can get it from here.

Media Coder is a video transcoder that also provides you a feature to change the aspect ratio. You can set pixel or display aspect ratio through it. It allows batch processing. So, import multiple videos files, change their aspect ratio and process them.

First, download and install it and then launch this software. After that, browse and select the source video files that you want to process. Next, go to the Picture tab from the bottom panel and select the aspect ratio you want to set. Select an aspect ratio and then click on the Start button to process all your videos and change their aspect ratio.

You can download it from here.

WinFF is an FFmpeg-based GUI software to convert videos. It also lets you change the aspect ratio of videos in a batch. It doesnt provide a set of predefined aspect ratios. You need to manually enter the aspect ratio that you want to apply to the output video.

You can download and install it and then start the software. Now, add your source video files and then click on the Options button. Next, go to the Video tab and inside the Aspect Ratio box, manually enter the output aspect ratio, such as 4:3, 16:9, etc. Finally, press the Convert button ad let it change the aspect ratio of all videos.

All the mentioned online tools and software let you change your video to an aspect ratio of 16:9. You can use a free online tool like OnlineConverter.com, or use free software like XMedia Recode for the same.

Thats it!

Now read: Best Free Video Quality Enhancers for Windows.

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Change Video Aspect Ratio using free online tools and software - TWCN Tech News