This week in web performance, we take a look at the Mobile World Congress highlights and Google’s new developments in quantum computing.
Barcelona hosts Mobile World Congress
This week, the 2015 Mobile World Congress brought 93,000 attendees to Barcelona, Spain with over 2,000 exhibitors and 3,800 analysts. Over 40 keynotes were given, featuring Mark Zuckerberg and Tom Wheeler, GSMA hosted the GSMA Seminar Program and highlighted the Connected Living innovations, and the 20th Annual Global Mobile Awards recognized outstanding industry leaders. This event reminded us that it’s the Internet of Everything era, with smart cars, appliances, vending machines and even city lights announced. Additional gadgets announced at the MWC included new phones, including the new Galaxy S6, new wearables, including the Huawei Watch, and new virtual reality headsets, including the HTC Vive.
Google improves SSL Warnings
Google has expanded its efforts to keep you safe online. New additions in Chrome, Search, and even advertisements have been made to keep you even safer from sites where unwanted software downloads are available that attempt or make undesired changes on your computer. Adrienne Porter Felt from the Google Security Team highlighted that one of the most important factors of the SSL warnings is that the browser warns only when it’s really under attack. In addition, the team had to strategize on how to best convey the threat in a way users could understand.
Apple Pay fraud increases due to lax bank ID checks
Apple Pay fraud is on the rise, ultimately highlighting a potential problem for all mobile payment systems. Using tokenized Device Account Numbers and the Touch ID fingerprint system, Apple Pay was initially praised for its increased security when it was launched in October 2014. However, reports earlier this week indicate that criminals have successfully set up iPhones with stolen personal information, gaining encrypted versions of victim’s credit cards by calling banks to authenticate a victim’s card on the new device. Banks are already responding by stepping up security measures required to verify your identity, including one-time authorization tokens, calls to customer service and logging into your online banking.
Google Tests First Error-Correction in Quantum Computing
Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Google reported on Wednesday that they had made a significant development in quantum computing, successfully creating the world’s first error-correcting quantum circuit. The system under test was able to stabilize a fragile array of nine qubits, the quantum analogue of the traditional bit. The researchers said they had accomplished this by creating circuits in which they used additional qubits to observe the state of computing qubits without altering their state. “Quantum computing becomes viable when a quantum state can be protected from environment-induced error “ said researchers in the Nature journal article.
Hear of any other interesting web or tech news this week? Let us know in a comment below!