Blog post: We should appreciate Twitter’s decision – and encourage others to follow

Twitter’s move to ban political ads comes as the UK enters a six-week general election campaign, one that will be more influenced by social media than ever before. For various reasons – including the British November and December weather -, online will form a key element for the general election campaigns. This is a trend we have seen in UK political campaigning over the past five years, now with almost half of campaign spending used online. Online campaigning has the benefit of targeted messaging, and Twitter’s decision will make this a little more difficult.

It is the right thing to do though: in a YouGov poll from earlier this year, 80% of people said they are in strong favour of regulating political ads on social media sites. Twitter follows ByteDance’s TikTok which announced a ban on all political advertising a few weeks ago – even if a large part of the platform’s audience is too young to vote.

Blog post: Tech policy and deals outside of Westminster

While Westminster once more turns to the government’s Brexit deal, there have been interesting deals and dealings in technology this past week. US private equity company Thoma Bravo acquired Oxfordshire-based cybersecurity firm Sophos for £3.1 billion. This acquisition can be interpreted as both and bad news for UK businesses. The ability to create a strong company so that it attracts international investment is a good sign of UK competitiveness. But then, a weak Sterling makes UK companies a cheap acquisition target, so there are also concerns. Further takeovers are likely to make the sell-out voices louder.

There was a more muted response when US investor KKR announced its intention to spend £500m on a majority stake in Hyperoptic, one of the altnets – telco providers with the financial resources and technical capabilities to build their own fibre infrastructure. With the government’s announcement to spend £5 billion on a nation-wide full-fibre broadband, KKR’s move makes sense. The political will to overhaul the UK’s connectivity has now also officially confirmed in the Queen’s Speech, and regardless of political developments, it seems likely that both incumbents as well as altnets will see financial gains. All they now need is that the actual laying of fibre cables will become easier.

Blog post: The commitment has been made – but we need more to add fibre to our diet

The Government is in determined election mode, only with no election to fight, for now. While the Prime Minister and his senior colleagues make their appearance at the nation’s hospitals, it is in areas like infrastructure and technology that are also receiving the attention of Ministers. The recent announcement that the Government is planning to support full-fibre rollout with £5 billion was met with what could at best be described as lukewarm applause.

Full-fibre – a fibre-optic cable running directly into a building, thus vastly increasing Internet access speeds – has been high on the political agenda in the UK for years. The country plays catch-up with other European countries, so the Government’s intent is to ensure that while the UK is doing that, no part of the UK falls behind. The financial support is therefore specifically aimed at the “hardest to reach 20% of the country”, meaning mainly regions in the North.

Blog post: Honestly, a vote for technology can be a vote for good

The Great Hack left me a little bruised. The Netflix documentary which explores Cambridge Analytica’s use of data in elections throws up a lot of questions. Was data misused and the public misled in the run up to the Brexit referendum? The fact that the answer is not a straight No should be enough reason for concern, and a clear call to action to look much more closely at our relationship with data and how this is being communicated to us. This warning was made long ago, when the scandal made headlines. It appears not much has happened since.

Data is the omnipresent and most powerful ingredient of our lives. It predicts the weather more accurately than ever before and drives cars. It provides insights into customer behaviour allowing retailers to tailor their offerings. It prevents fraud by looking at credit card spending patterns and identifying discrepancies.

Article: Brands should stress societal benefits of 5G

My views for BrandZ's 2019 Telecom Insights:

"With Donald Trump’s earlier call for 6G signals, we should reflect on whether the current hype around the “Gs” helps telecom providers—or not. They now focus on speed, with the promise that 5G will be great for gaming and watching movies. While this is true, it creates a dilemma: We are becoming more concerned with digital wellbeing and are trying to moderate the time we spend online. But 5G will keep us glued to our phones for even longer. The real advantage of 5G is to realize services that have been talked about for years: autonomous driving, smart cities, telesurgery. Services that will fundamentally improve our lives and societies. A focus on speed is reductive and narrows the 5G narrative for the telecom brands. They should tell us how 5G will really impact us as consumers. An estimated 40 percent of the world’s population could have access to 5G in the next few years. To deliver that vision, we need a conversation about the power of 5G as a force for good."

Published here in June 2019: https://www.brandz.com/articlenew/telecom-insights and http://online.pubhtml5.com/bydd/ksdy/ (page 332)

Promoted via @HKStrategies:

https://twitter.com/HKStrategies/status/1141449833393401858

Blog post: The solace of secure quantum computing

“The only way to beat a machine is with another machine.” – Alan Turing

A recent story that physicists reversed time using quantum computing immediately grabbed my attention. It is a great read about how scientists restored a quantum computer to the state it had been in a moment earlier. I find this mind-blowing and confusing in a nice way, and there has been a fascinating debate around whether the experiment has anything to do with reversing the flow of time – or nothing at all.

I have to admit that I do not have a very clear opinion on whether time might be theoretically reversible. I kind of hope that it is, but equally I hope it isn’t. But what is clear to me is that the possibilities of quantum computing are vast and as a field it is simply very different to “normal” computing. Quantum computers calculate things simultaneously rather than going through calculations in sequenced, chronological order, where speed is limited by the laws of physics. If a “normal” computer is an Aston Martin, a quantum computer is a supersonic speed rocket. It is much, much faster.

This new understanding of computer speed results in two views: one that acknowledges how “good” causes can be accelerated, such as pharmaceutical discoveries or more accurate atmospheric models to help us understand and combat climate change. This idea of “humanizing quantum computing” is diametrically opposed to the one which predicts chaos and problems, for example by using quantum computing to crack the encryption mechanisms we currently consider sophisticated and secure.

Computers typically break passwords by going through combinations of characters and numbers – a process known as “brute forcing”. The time it takes for a computer to find the right combination is defined by password complexity and length. A password with eight random lowercase characters should take a contemporary supercomputer – a machine which is 100,000 times faster than a desktop computer – no longer than two seconds to break. Passwords with lower and upper case characters are broken in less than eight minutes; lower and upper case characters with numbers in around half an hour. Adding symbols increases this to some four hours. If you want to be on the safe side, use at least 10 characters and include a mix of numbers, lowercase letters, uppercase letters and symbols. This will keep one of today’s mid range supercomputers busy for three years, in which time hopefully you will have changed your password anyway.

Supercomputers will continue to gain speed and power, so the time taken to complete tasks like breaking passwords will be revised down significantly in the coming years. But whatever speed supercomputers gain, quantum computers will make them look like novices, like an under-8 football team taking on Juventus Turin. So going back to the password cracking task and considering the extra power of quantum computers, the theory is that quantum computing can break passwords much more easily – including the ones we think are extremely long and complex. Another theory argues that quantum computing could turn into supervillains, able to break the security mechanisms on which blockchain relies. As more and more applications such as loyalty cards or personal health records are built on underlying blockchain technology, the concern is that quantum computing might put our health and finances in danger.

All of this seems plausible to me, more or less. But the development of quantum computing is driven by the motivation to achieve benefits for us as people. Its objective is to make our world cleaner, better and safer. Whilst quantum computing might be used by criminals, its emergence is likely to accelerate the development of powerful new mechanisms which will be more secure and quantum-proof. It is likely that these will be developed well before quantum computing becomes a reality.

For now, time travel and password cracking make great headlines. They also give quantum computing and science as a whole a negative image. If the public thinks that a technology is incredibly esoteric, they will feel confused. And confusion can often lead to rejection and fear. This is why technology needs to be explained carefully and in a non-sensationalist way. Quantum computing may still be in its infancy but it is only a matter of time for it to be more widely deployed. When it arrives, we might be shaken, but should not be stirred. We should understand the risks it carries, but even more so embrace the opportunities it will bring.

Published 03 May 2019 on hkstrategies.com:
https://hkstrategies.co.uk/the-solace-of-secure-quantum-computing/