The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Say you want to send a private message, cast a secret vote, or sign a document securely. If you do any of these tasks on a computer, you’re relying on encryption to keep your data safe. That encryption needs to …
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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to tile a bathroom floor, square tiles are the simplest option—they fit together without any gaps in a grid pattern that can continue indefinitely. That square grid has a property shared by many other tilings: Shift the …
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Apple is launching its first post-quantum protections, one of the biggest deployments of the future-resistant encryption technology to date. Billions of medical records, financial transactions, and messages we send to each other are protected by encryption. It’s fundamental to keeping modern life and the global economy running relatively smoothly. However, …
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The world’s biggest computing companies and a raft of well-funded startups all agree: The future of computing is manipulating data with quantum mechanics. Over the past decade, governments, private companies, and venture capitalists have collectively invested billions of dollars into quantum computing, which aims to solve problems using a new …
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If you’ve ever bought an engagement ring, or any other diamond jewelry, you likely know about the “Four Cs”: carat, cut, color, and clarity, which between them determine the quality of a gem. The unofficial fifth C is certification—paperwork from an independent authority validating the qualities and authenticity of a …
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