Category Archives: quantum computing

Updates 2020- PART 1

quantum computing, Social Media, updates

Introduction

I think I’m about due for an update as it is SunSaturn’s 15 year anniversary since it was first created. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUNSATURN! I personally took a lot of time last 5 years soul searching, but in end I’ve decided SunSaturn is way to go. I think SunSaturn will be now taking a new approach in 2020 offering hosting, VPN service as well as a few new services by the end of 2022. I have a lot of catching up to do! World has changed a lot now, 2020 marks the era of 5G networks, artificial intelligence, smart homes, robots, drones, flying cars(300k for one! Time to get pilots license to fly to my brothers place!), virtual reality, star link internet from Elon Musk, and every country in world will soon be implementing their own digital currencies like Bitcoin! Ok that is a very long list, so lets break down each one shall we and see where people should be focusing on for 2021 and 2022!

Quantum computers and new encryption

In previous article I talked a lot about Shor’s Algorithm being able to break all current encryption. So what has been done about it? Only thing they could of course, increased the bits in encryption keys. Will it help? Not if someone builds a 1 million qubit computer like a company is currently promising by 2022 for US Government. They are coming up with a quantum resistant algorithm now, so in mean time best bet is still to use symmetric encryption. Algorithms like AES512 should be fine, backed up with elliptical curve instead of RSA/DSA routines.

What about email? World has now moved to open source project GNUPG, so if you haven’t already, setup gpg for your email client and submit your public key to internet servers. This will be first step in order to do anything for 2021/2022, so I will write a separate article on this alone how I implement it as it is way to in-depth to setup something like that for first time. But rest assured once it is setup, people will finally take you seriously on the internet if you can sign your own emails.It’s important! Plus as an added bonus, GPG finally supports elliptic curves, so you may actually learn a thing or two about how Bitcoin works in the process!

5G networks and virtual reality

Here we go, what everyone truly wants to know about. All the 5G propaganda during the COVID-19 where people thought it caused it and started burning town 5G towers over it even, completely hilarious. 5G does NOT hurt you in any way or cause COVID lol. The old saying is people fear what they do not understand, rest assured, it was complete nonsense.

Think of 5G like when we went from 3G then to 4G then to LTE. What they are doing is just paying for another spectrum to use so they can offer faster internet in BIG CITIES. Yes, generally it will only be offered in BIG CITIES, because this new spectrum has limited range. Think of how your router at home was once A,B or N then went to AC. We sure get good range on 2.4ghz routers at home, but when we close to the 5ghz connection it is way faster(ie transferring a 8 gig movie to your phone from computer on your home network).

What about people not in big cities? This is where Elon Musk comes in with Star Link. If you have looked up in sky at all in last year you might have seen them. Satellites 500km above the earth that promise to offer high speed internet to rural people. Star Link cannot provide to big cities, because it would flood the bandwidth available. So if your in an urban setting, look for fiber or 5G networks.

The PROS of 5G: virtual reality will become a thing! Google has acquired a new google glass company, perhaps glasses won’t be $1500, how they flopped last time, other companies have them for $1000, but that price tag will eventually come down. Google needs to take a hit on glasses for developers worldwide, because if developers all over the world don’t own a pair, there is no point in offering them to public with nothing built for them, google can’t do this alone, needs worldwide developer support. So google, offer them to developers world wide for $300, then sell to general public for 1k down the road!

Self-driving cars will become a thing, as well as drones flying around cities. These are 2 things that would absolutely need 5G to be effective. Another PRO is cell phone companies may compete for your home internet business, giving you more options for internet in the city. Yes, this means all our phones should be placed in antique shop currently. Yes, even my Google Pixel 4XL belongs there within 2 years as they only making phones with 5G chips now. If you live in rural area, no big rush.

The CONS of 5G: Government control of course. Before the pandemic happened protesters in the UK were already upset with facial recognition and painting their faces. I will say this again and again, stop putting your pictures on FACEBOOK and STOP USING IT! Everyone knows by now NSA has backdoor access to all your pictures on there, they will use them to facial ID you. Has Edward Snowden still not gotten through to everyone? He had to become a fugitive of the USA because he cared enough about you to let you know what was happening and your still not listening to him?

Artificial intelligence is here, if you need to post your picture/data publicly all the time, use SnapChat or Signal. For love of god just put them anywhere where company won’t share your data to be thrown in an AI database! They should be paying you to share your data, your just giving them free data to feed their artificial intelligence programs and not giving you a cent! If you absolutely need to use Facebook, run your pictures through an image manipulation program first to throw off their AI. If they give you money, then maybe consider submitting your unedited pictures. Click like on things you hate, dislike on things you love, screw them right up. Post messages encrypted if you can, and give your friends the keys to unlock your messages, this is how internet was meant to be! If google started sharing your data, we wouldn’t buy android anymore. We shouldn’t even be using our real names on the internet, internet was made for freedom of speech and that is why anonymity was needed in first place, people will fight with their last dying breath to protect that. In the future governments will be crying otherwise, as artificial intelligence programs begin talking with each other, and they have no way to stop it after. Programmers control the internet, not governments, always remember that.

Social Media Internet Draft Proposal

I propose an internet draft for social media, where everyone has 2 copies of their own blockchain they created, one for public keys and storage of media, and the other for private keys to decrypt each message on public chain. I propose every post be encrypted with a new key.I propose a new algorithm where on unix servers we have permissions such as :

-rwxrwxrwx   1 dan  dan    380 Jul 16 04:05 file.conf

That at any time a given owner can allow Owner Group or Others to have access to a given post. Service providers such as FaceBook, Google if forced to remove a post can set the “Other” “rwx”(read,write,execute) flags off and only be able to see the message if owner does in fact set the “Other” bit flags. The “Group” flag can be set to everyone in their circle of friends to be viewed by encrypting post with each of their friends public keys. If “Group” flag was removed from said post, then owner with their secret key could remove friends public keys from post, but also a mechanism to add keys back if “Group” flag was set again.

The idea here, is social media providers may not view posts if only group and owner flags set, as we have seen how destructive internet becomes when that happens and the many privacy breeches of normal users. Governments back-doors into these systems as well as companies profiting putting users data in their artificial intelligence programs. The providers may continue profiting on ads beside each post, but may no longer retain data on/of normal users. I also propose mechanism in place where any photos posted online, users have option of tossing them through a program to mangle the bits in the image enough to take AI facial recognition capabilities away.

The Social Media companies MUST use a decentralized blockchain to pull in data, normal users would be able to feed data into providers decentralized blockchain with users public blockchain with appropriate bits set. This is important otherwise providers could read and steal the said data. Terms of Service must be in place where they do not store the data when the “Other” bit is set. Social media companies could compete to mine blocks with other miners or join a mining pool. I propose mining should be done on IP addresses connected for longest amount of time, mine a block, then they get thrown to bottom of list, so everyone in the world can have a part of the mining process. This ensures if said provider abandons the chain, another one could start up in its place with all data in tact. We would say encrypt next block in chain with next X amount of IP addresses that have been there the longest hosting the chain. I propose the block chain itself be split into A-Z, a-z, 0-9(8 char usernames) for anonymous usernames. This allows miners to only host a part of the data for rewards, as storage may become expensive to hold to big of a blockchain.

As world currently stands, block-chains are worthless unless they contain data that people feel is valuable, allowing investors to invest in them. The exception being Bitcoin itself, the grandfather of digital currency set to be the new Gold if any government digital currencies fail. IF a social media company did a nice interface to a social media block-chain, investors have a digital currency to invest in that is worthwhile. It is then not just a bunch of useless numbers, but actual data that they could download to mine blocks or day trade. It then has a purpose, not just a bunch of numbers and a promise for a company to do well. Prices on crypto currency then would reflect size of blockchain, current price of storage medium, and cost of hardware to pull queries from that storage. This is a long-term solution to this problem in the world.

What will make people switch to government digital currencies in the long-term will be exactly that, more people they have in their country, bigger blockchain(s) will be, making them more valuable to investors. So think USD and China. If someone was actually able to crack an address on the said blockchain, everything from social security numbers to passports could be exposed, thus why it would have so much value in the future. This of course could be protected by governments by forcing end users to do a password change every month by giving them a new one and re-encrypting that block on chain keeping chain brute force proof from its own employees.

What is discerning about governments having centralized block-chains, is let’s say you have a million dollars, they could essentially just break the chain like it never existed. That is why regulations must be in place through central banks. IF they are able to simply reverse transactions on blockchain, the blockchain will have less value to investors on the exchanges, as was the case with Ethereum. Currently central banks are using digital currency, as well as Russia and a few other countries, so it’s just a matter of time before mastercard and visa are on the chain making this a reality. They are already hiring block-chain developers as we speak.

Profit: Social media companies after establishing a block-chain could in fact profit more with this model. Users are not afraid to use their systems, providers are no longer afraid of governments. Providers have more user retention instead of running to every competitor every time their is a security breach. Providers could apply for ICO with cryptocurrency exchanges, have shares in the digital currency, and offer users that cryptocurrency in exchange for another digital currency through current exchange rates at crypto currency providers such as Binance.

This is enough for Part 1, until next time….

Dan.

Quantum technology, artificial intelligence and privacy

artificial intelligence, quantum computing

Today I would like to talk to you about what is going to happen in next few years and direction world is going to go. To start off with quantum computers will arrive. With INTEL submitting their first 16 qubit chip to research lab in Europe a few weeks ago from time of this writing, technology is near. Quantum chips won’t replace traditional chips think of them more like an add-on like a graphics card. Example: people use graphics card for artificial intelligence as they are faster than normal CPU’s so instead people use GPU’s and when quantum computers arrive they will use quantum instead. There are still difficulties in technology with it requiring a set temperature to operate efficiently when they can overcome that, then perhaps we can have a 50 qubit chip, at 50 qubits it could finally challenge traditional chips. Although places like D-Wave etc have 2000 qubit implementations, they are WAY to big for a normal user!

 

Quantum computers when they arrive will pose a lot of new challenges with technology today. First of lets talk about the pros: encryption will be better, medical research will be way better, artificial intelligence will be able to take on tasks they could not before, number crunching and data prediction in general will be faster and more feasible, your toilet will speak to you letting you know how to change your diet before you get a disease! The cons: where there is power it is always abused: while we submit our DNA to health agencies, governments will steal that for their own purposes, stock markets will collapse till code on exchanges are rewritten to delay buying and selling of stocks to create fair market advantage again, big companies like Facebook and Google will control AI for the most part and that will starve off competition. To create fair competition for AI, all researchers need all the data google and Facebook have to train programs.

 

Protecting yourself in a quantum world. When browsing the internet whenever possible use the Tor Browser. This will protect you against Google etc being able to record everything you search for. Artificial intelligence exists for image recognition, speech recognition, tone recognition, and a lot of difference technologies. In the future to protect yourself against them using AI against you, never put a picture of yourself on any of these sites. After all we have no problems in them detecting images of cats and what not, but having a camera on street one day be able to recognize you because you uploaded your picture to Facebook or Google is not a good idea. Currently image recognition is only good at detecting for about 10 years because of the aging process, this is why drivers license wants a new photo before that, typically every 5 years. Technology with GPS has advanced to pinpoint you very accurately with smart phones. Companies like Google etc can trace you by everywhere you bring your smartphone, in fact they have made it so you cannot pull battery out anymore on all recent phones, just shutting the phone off is not enough. One solution is to install Fake GPS app so you can always appear from Christmas Island and only disable it when you need it. Another issue is credit card companies showing all your purchases, embrace crypto-currencies for their anonymity. After all the purpose in crypto-currencies is to put these credit card companies out of business in first place as they having been ripping off businesses for years with transaction fees and passing on the cost to you, its time you fought back against them as well to keep more money in your pocket. While its not possible to remain completely anonymous, ie: your drivers license and passport pictures, doing your best to protect your privacy beyond that is left as an exercise to the reader.

 

Enhancing AI the safe way is easier said than done. One solution would be for example to create a free dating website for people where they can remain anonymous with their real names, however researchers could pull all characteristic data into their AI programs for training. Social media site the same thing, allow people to remain anonymous. Facebook unfortunately if not knowing your real name will go behind your back and ask friends on your list for real identifiable information, so your not safe period associating your pictures with this company, also history has shown them in bed with the NSA. Essentially what Facebook is is a FBI database for the public and your just adding to it for them. So keep posts away from things like what you go to everyday, or to much of your likes or dislikes, remain neutral on everything by not clicking like on anything. Another solution could be opening an account where noone knows you originally under your real identity and keep family and friends to other apps that don’t invade your privacy and use encryption with a respected trustable company. Facebook info on you is viewable on you by anyone in position of authority with or without your consent, they have backdoors to the system to view anyone, keep this in mind especially when crossing borders.

 

AI research after all is about things like taking someones foot size and matching it with another characteristic to say determine if person is male or female. Never should it reach a point of knowing real names and addresses of people, this is a safety concern and a privacy concern everyone should be fighting against. When people say they don’t fear surveillance because they have nothing to hide, Edward Snowden says he tells them: “Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” Words of wisdom.

 

Also the legal system is flawed in general, all it takes is hearsay to put anybody away without any scientific evidence. All it takes is a few people to collaborate their stories on a lie about someone at a trial to put innocent people away. You can see why you should fight for your privacy, less info people have on you, less believable people will be.

 

Until next time,

SunSaturn

Quantum Computers and Encryption

encryption, quantum computing

I should make a note on quantum mechanics and encryption to people having come from a computer science background. You really believe encrypting your data is safe? Read on…All numbers stored in a computer are 0’s and 1’s. This has traditionally meant on and off in electronics. In assembly language or binary, here is what a byte really looks like 0000 1111. It is 8 bits, so there are in essence 2 to the power of 8= 256 possible combinations in a byte, each of those bits can be 1 or 0. Encryption for today is based on an old math concept you may remember from school. A prime number has exactly two factors, 1 and itself. Any number can be written as a product of prime numbers. If you multiply two large prime numbers, you get a huge non-prime number with only two (large) prime factors. So concept of today’s encryption is it will be REALLY hard for a computer to figure out the 2 prime numbers when a large number is involved. Here is problem with this encryption: with quantum computing, there are 2 concepts called superposition and entanglement. Entanglement you can think of as 2 objects in space and time can be in same place at same time and do 2 completely different things. Einstein use to call this “spooky”. A mathematician named Peter Shor came up with a quantum algorithm that if a quantum computer exists, then all today’s encryption could be broken easily. The university of waterloo in canada already has a quantum computer prototype. All they really need to do to complete it is come up with enough “qubits”(these are particles we have that currently can do entanglement), so 2 objects can be in 2 places at same time, and all encryption is broken. Current record is 12 qubits. When quantum computers exist we will need a new algorithm that superimposes bits to make encryption sound again, but nothing you have right now cannot be broken, and when quantum hits, all your SSL, and non-symmetric encryption keys will be rendered useless, unless your already on board with an algorithm such as lattice for example. So this a quick note on where science is, fact we can make particles be in 2 places at one time now, and making sure you don’t believe your encyption is safe. As soon as scientists figure out how to make more qubits by studying decoherence, quantum computers are officially here.

Here is a reference for formula that will break all encryption when quantum computers have enough qubits: Shor’s Algorithm

And here is waterloo’s status where they are at with there current quantum computers: Waterloo University …. go CANADA!

Till Next Time,

Dan.