China launches quantum satellite in battle against hackers

China has launched a satellite to test whether communications can be rendered hack-proof in its latest challenge to US supremacy in space.

In contrast to previous Chinese initiatives that replicated the achievements of US and Russian space programmes of decades ago, the satellite would, if successful, put China at the forefront of a new technology.

Micius, named after an ancient Chinese scientist and philosopher, was launched early on Tuesday from a military base in the Gobi desert. Photons, or light particles, will be fired at it to see whether quantum physics will allow the secure encryption of long-range communication.

The theory being tested is called quantum entanglement, in which two photons have an invisible and instantaneous connection — a property Albert Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance”.

If the entanglement endures over the distance between Micius and Earth, with information passing through a network of satellites, it will in principle allow for virtually unhackable communications.

The project was a “landmark event for quantum technologies”, said Ronald Hanson of the Technical University of Delft, a leading European quantum researcher. “With this launch China has established itself as the leading pioneer towards a global quantum communications network.”

The lead scientist on the project, Pan Jian-wei at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, said the $100m satellite was so far operating properly but that it would take several months of data collection before the experiment could be deemed a success.

His team will first test sending a secure key from Beijing to the city of Urumqi, on China’s frontier with Central Asia, and then from Beijing to Vienna. The weak signal means it can only be tested at nighttime.

If this experiment is successful the team hopes to launch a second satellite within the next four to five years, he said: “for a quantum network, one satellite is not sufficient”

In a quantum internet, made up of quantum computers, eavesdropping on communication would be impossible. The satellite might also be used for experiments in quantum science over distances that were previously unachievable.

With ground-based systems, the complementary nature of photons degrades after about 300km. The record distance for quantum communication using fibre optics is just over 100km.

The Micius launch fits a global pattern of increased interest in quantum research, such as the EU’s €1bn Flagship programme for quantum technologies.

A newly wealthy Chinese state has poured money into scientific projects of a kind that lacks funding elsewhere. Funding for basic research through the National Natural Science Foundation in Beijing rose to about $10bn in 2015, still far short of the $131bn budgeted by the US in 2015.

However, progress has been stifled by a bureaucracy that values Communist party patronage networks over scientific excellence, and by the need for co-operation with the military, which controls most satellite capability.

The revelations of Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Administration contractor, of the extent of US spying on its own citizens and foreign powers have galvanised international efforts in secure communications.

Some countries mandate that servers be located domestically, creating huge expenses for US technology groups. Others have secured political mandates for costly shielding programmes.

In 2013 Mr Snowden said the NSA had penetrated computers in mainland China. His revelations played into fears of excessive US influence that were gaining ground in China’s military, security and Communist party apparatus, fuelling a military build-up and a crackdown on civil society.

FT

Glo Grows Mobile Market Share To 24%, Ramps Up 5m New Subscribers In 1 Year

National telecommunications operator, Globacom, which has for the past one and half years been the preferred data services provider has also emerged the first choice of subscribers in voice services. The company recorded 68% of all  additional GSM lines in the country in the last 12 months.

Telecom industry statistics published on the website of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)  showed that a total of 7,477,977 new lines were activated between June 2015 and June 2016, with Globacom recording a whopping 5,063,895 new susbcribers, representing 68%, while Airtel added 2,414,082 new customers.

On the contrary, MTN and Etisalat had their GSM subscriber figures whittled down. While Etisalat lost 382,336 customers, MTN's subscriber base was depleted by 4, 403,344 in the last one year.

Details of the NCC report showed that, with the feat achieved by Globacom, the data grandmaster has now grown its market share from 21% to 24% with 36.3m subscribers at the end of June, 2016. But, MTN which once had over 45% share of the market had this reduced to 39% at the end of June with 58.4m subscribers. Glo had a total of 31,256,677 customers by June 2015, whereas MTN had 62,813,111.

Significantly, while Glo has continued to narrow the gap between it and MTN, it has created a substantial gap between it and Airtel. Both Glo and Airtel were at par in terms of market share only three months ago with each having 21%.

But Airtel, whose subscriber base stood at 29,564,766 at the middle of last year, had 31,978,848 customers at the end of June 2016. This still keeps it at 21% share of the GSM market. On its part, Etisalat had 15% share with 22,469,896 customers at the end of June, 2016, down from 22,852,232 at the same time last year.

Globacom's lead in the voice segment of the industry complements it's status as clear leader in the data market where it has for the last one year remained tops in new internet subscriber acquisition.

In June 2016 for instance, while the industry gained a total of 318, 008 new internet subscribers, Globacom alone had 272,674 of the new customers. In essence, Globacom accounted for about 86 percent of the total internet subscriber acquisitions in the industry in the month of June.

It is believed that Globacom's unparalleled growth even in the midst of shrinking economy is the dividend of the massive network upgrade it carried out recently as well as its commitment to offering innovative products and services. 

Pound overtakes Argentine peso to become 2016’s worst performing currency

The pound posted a third week of declines spurred by the Brexit vote, winning itself the title of 2016’s worst performer among major currencies.

Sterling’s rally on Friday barely dented its 2.7 per cent slide versus the dollar in the preceding four days. The U.K. currency this week overtook the Argentine peso as the biggest loser versus the dollar among 31 major peers in 2016 as investors continued to digest the fallout from the June 23 referendum decision to leave the European Union.

“Sterling’s going to fall considerably further as the effects of that uncertainty on investment and growth emerge from the gloom,” Kit Juckes, a macro-strategist at Societe Generale SA in London, wrote in a note to clients.

The pound rose 0.3 per cent to US$1.2941 at 4:55 p.m. in London, leaving it down 2.5 per cent this week and more than 12 per cent this year. It briefly erased its daily gain after a U.S. Labor Department report showed a bigger-than-estimated jump in June payrolls.


Sterling advanced 0.5 per cent to 85.30 pence per euro, for a 1.7 per cent weekly slide.

1985 and 2007

On Wednesday, Britain’s currency touched a 31-year low of US$1.2798 after the closure of a number of property funds echoed the real-estate tremors at the start of the financial crisis in 2007. U.K. consumer confidence plunged the most in 21 years in a special post-referendum survey conducted from June 30 to July 5, data showed Friday.

That the pound surpassed the Argentine peso as the world’s worst performer is all the more remarkable given that the South American nation’s economy shrank in 2014 and that President Mauricio Macri has removed most of the currency controls that had been propping up the exchange rate. It’s only in December that the peso was devalued.

Financial Post

Konga Engineer, Celestine says he builds his portfolio by developing church websites for free

Celestine Omin, is a Software Engineer at Konga Online Shopping Ltd, whose job is to write computer programs for a living.

Here's what he had to share in a recent interview with Emmanuel Ogunsola, a Lead Product Strategist at Techpoint.ng.

''What I used to do when in University was to build and maintain websites for churches for free and I was using that to build my own portfolio so that when I met a potential employer I could show the things I had done,'' Omin told Ogunsola. '' Nobody cares if you are paid or not, they just need to know you can do it. This gives you an extra step through the door as opposed to someone just looking for a job.''

His role at Konga:

I work as a Software Engineer at Konga. Basically I work with the Software Oriented Architecture SOE team. My team is responsible for taking out all the huge applications at Konga and turning them into micro services. The motivation behind is the fact that formulative applications, large applications if you make a change in one part irrespective of whatever part that you make that change in, you have to deploy the entire application. Which is time consuming, very tricky and quite risky. But if you work with micro services, it allows you break these applications into chunks and when you are deploying, it allows you deploy the parts you made the changes to. So it is easier to monitor, do quality assurance and deployment is easy.

Interestingly, I wasn’t coding when I first joined Konga. For obvious reasons Konga outsourced it’s tech to an external company. My first job at Konga was doing content upload. So I organised people to help upload products on the website and I did that for about a month until Konga created a team that later handled content upload.

On Awards:

After University, Google’s Day 2011 which was held at the Civic centre, Lagos. Google had this chrome extension challenge and I came first winning a Nexus device. Then I also entered for a competition organised by the US Department of States, it had to do with building software to combat things like climate change. My application didn’t win but I got an honourable mention. I also entered for the Apps for Africa competition organised by US Department of States and I came third.

His engagement on personal or commercial projects while in the University:

No I didn’t do any paid projects as an undergraduate, my choice of studying Computer Science was pure hunger, passion and love as compared to most kids. I wasn’t quite interested in what most of my peers were interested in; football wasn’t my thing and the only sport that got me was table tennis. I still like playing table tennis till today. The next natural thing after table tennis for me was computers. I felt I was pretty good at it and it something that came to me naturally, there was no motivation required. It wasn’t about making money out of it, tech at the time wasn’t as sexy as it is now. Choosing to write programs was just me following my passion.

More from Omin, visit, Techpoint

Alibaba unveils its first smart car — and it’s available for pre-order now

Alibaba has officially announced its move into the automobile space after it unveiled its first “internet car” in collaboration with SAIC, one of China’s big four state-owned automakers.

The RX5 is available for pre-order now, it’s priced upwards of RMB 148,800 ($22,300) with deliveries scheduled to start in August. The sports vehicle has been developed over the last two years as part of a joint venture between Alibaba and SAIC, which put a combined $160 million into the 50-50 project. It includes a new version of Alibaba’s Yun operating system to enable the car to connect to and tap into various internet services.

Alibaba raised a few examples of what that could mean in practical terms. It ranges from personalized greetings, music and preferred destinations based on settings that can be configured from a smartphone or wearable, to the ability to use Alibaba’s Alipay payments service to pay for parking spaces, fill up with gas or buy a coffee. It’s logical that Alibaba’s own services are a core part of possibility functionality, but the company said it wants to open YunOS to third parties, too.

On the entertainment side of things, the RX5 includes three LED screens and space for up to four detachable 360 degree cameras to record video and take photos — because IN-CAR SELFIES — and a smart rear view mirror. As you might expect, there’s support for voice controls while an onboard “intelligent” mapping system, the companies claim, will work without GPS or WiFi.

There’s no crazy, next-level ‘smart’ car features like autopilot, instead Alibaba is putting the focus on a shipping a connected car.

“What we are creating is not ‘internet in the car’, but a ‘car on the internet’. This is a significant milestone in the automobile industry. Smart operating systems become the second engine of cars, while data is the new fuel,” said Dr. Wang Jian, who is chairman of Alibaba’s ‘Technology Steering Committee.’

“Going forward, cars will become an important platform for internet services and smart hardware innovation. We will be embracing a world where everything is closely connected,” Wang added.

Alibaba is far from the only Chinese internet firm to get into cars. LeEco, formerly LeTv, is backing ambitious U.S. project Faraday Future and building a car of its own, while Baidu is one the front runners testing self-driving vehicles in both China and the U.S..

Alibaba is also a major shareholder in Didi Chuxing, the company that is beating Uber in China which recently landed a $1 billion investment from Apple as part of a gargantuan $7 billion round. It is unclear whether Alibaba will use that relationship and work with Didi to provide smart cars.

Source: Techcrunch

Shares slide as Brexit fears take hold

UK and European stock markets fell and the pound hit a fresh 31-year low as worries over the UK's vote to leave the EU continue to rattle markets.

The UK's FTSE 100 share index closed 1.3% lower. US shares initially followed suit but closed higher.

Earlier, the pound fell to $1.2798, its lowest since 1985, before rebounding.

Analysts blamed warnings from the Bank of England that Brexit risks were "crystallising" and fears about the UK commercial property market.

In late trade, the pound was at about $1.29. Sterling has dropped by about 14% against the dollar since hitting $1.50 ahead of the referendum result.

Against the euro, the pound was down 0.9% at €1.1656, having earlier hit its lowest level since 2013.

"Pessimistic predictions for sterling are coming true," said Andrew Edwards, chief executive of ETX Capital. "The pound is the chief proxy for the post-Brexit mood in the markets."

[Read More]

Amazon Deepens Footprint In Online Education

Amazon is looking to deepen its ties to the education world with a new online marketplace for lesson plans, curriculum, and other resources that debuted on Monday, called Inspire.

Until now, Amazon’s presence in educational institutions has been mostly limited to its original business of selling digital and physical books. The e-commerce giant has partnered with a handful of universities to open co-branded online bookstores for selling textbooks and a number of physical campus stores as package pick-up centers.

But lately, Amazon has been making inroads in early education as well. Earlier this year, Amazon signed a deal with New York City public schools, one of the largest U.S. school districts to provide digital books to its million-plus students. The contract was worth an estimated $30 million, according to The New York Times. In 2013, Amazon bought online math education startup TenMarks.

Inspire is an online marketplace where Kindergarten through 12th grade teachers can search for and find free resources, such as school plans, lessons apps, software, and other educational content. Teachers can search the library by grade, and subject matter, and can also access reviews of the materials by fellow teachers.

For now, it appears that all of the resources that are searchable and downloadable are free for teachers. The market for selling online education technology and material to schools could be massive. According to one report, global education technology spending will reach $19 billion by 2019.

Amazon isn’t the only technology company that is looking to capitalize on this massive market. According to the New York Times, Microsoft also said Monday that it would work on training programs for school administrators, and other digital services for schools. Google also offers a number of productivity tools for educators, and on Monday, debuting a new projecting technology for teachers and student.

- Fortune