Breaking Views: Why an Alibaba I.P.O. Is Both Promise and Problem for Yahoo

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Bits Blog: A Quantum Computing Problem Solved

University of Sydney Michael J. Biercuk, director of the Quantum Control Laboratory in the University of Sydney’s School of Physics.

Researchers at the University of Sydney and Dartmouth College said they have found a new way to design quantum memory, a key element in making quantum computing a reality. The method, they say, reduces the number of errors typically expected in quantum computing without sacrificing high-speed performance.

Quantum computing draws on certain well established, but difficult-to-control subatomic behaviors. In particular, it draws on the odd property of objects having both positive and negative charges at the same time, or for one subatomic particle affecting another without seemingly coming into physical contact with it.

Multiplied over many objects, this affords a great deal more computation than in the standard digital world of ones and zeros. Utilizing these properties could massively increase the power of certain types of computation, with implications for things like code breaking and security, materials science and facial recognition.

Compounding the difficulty of capturing and observing behavior in one of these machines, however, most quantum states exist for only the briefest fraction of a second. Keeping quantum information intact for long periods of time and keeping it relevant to the computation is one of the more daunting tasks in quantum computing. That is the problem the team says it may have solved.

The researchers used a technique called dynamical decoupling, or DD. DD has been shown to suppress errors in quantum systems by cancelling out fluctuations, something like the way one wave can smooth out a contending wave.

“The waves can overlap just the right way to build up a big amplitude or cancel out fluctuations,” Michael J. Biercuk, director of the Quantum Control Laboratory in the University of Sydney’s School of Physics, wrote in an e-mail. “In DD we need the interference to be just right such that the errors cancel.”

The team added to existing work in this field, he said, by figuring out how to break a sequence of behaviors into smaller segments that would preserve information without distorting the overall result.

“Amazingly, we were able to then show that even if we interrupted after some number of cycles, the error probability wouldn’t change much — meaning we could always ‘bound’ the error probability if we used repeated DD sequences” he said. “That is vital for a system designer who needs to know how his/her memory will perform.”

The results appear in the June 19 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

While the breakthrough is significant, Dr. Biercuk said, researchers must now show large-scale experimental demonstration of the process on a repeatable basis. The memory system must then be integrated with other error-correction algorithms to create more uniform results.

In addition to the computational uses, Dr. Biercuk said the results may be useful in the development of certain types of quantum-based communications technologies as well.

Bits Blog: Smartphone Makers Pressed to Address Growing Theft Problem

Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press George Gascón, San Francisco’s district attorney, center, along with Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, second from right, at a press conference Thursday to announce the formation of the Secure Our Smartphones initiative.

1:16 p.m. | Updated This post was changed to include the name of the company that estimated the total cost of cellphone theft.

Seeking to curb a nationwide increase in smartphone thefts, New York’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney on Thursday announced an initiative to push the industry to develop technologies that will discourage theft and dry up the market for stolen devices.

The new group, the Secure Our Smartphones Initiative, will include prosecutors, political officials, law enforcement and consumer advocates from over a dozen states. The co-chairmen will be the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and the San Francisco district attorney, George Gascón.

Mr. Gascón and Mr. Schneiderman were scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon with representatives from Apple, Samsung, Google’s Motorola unit and Microsoft, which have about 90 percent of the smartphone market.

“It is totally unacceptable that we have an epidemic of crime that we believe can be eliminated if the technological fixes that we believe are available are put into place,” Mr. Schneiderman said.

The coalition is encouraging manufacturers to equip all smartphones with a “kill switch.” When consumers reported to providers that their cellphone had been stolen, the phone, like a stolen credit card, would be rendered inoperable.

“For the thieves who would steal them,” Mr. Schneiderman said, the phones would be “nothing more than a paperweight.”

The loss and theft of cellphones cost consumers over $30 billion in 2012, according to a recent study by Lookout, a San Francisco mobile security company. About 113 smartphones are lost or stolen each minute in the United States and, according to the Federal Communications Commission, cellphone thefts account for 30 to 40 percent of all robberies nationwide. In New York City, the thefts increased 40 percent last year alone.

“The industry has the moral and the social obligation to fix this problem,” Mr. Gascón said. “There are very few things that can be fixed with a technological solution, and this is one of them.”

Apple said on Monday that its next mobile operating system, iOS7, to be released in the fall, has a new feature called Activation Lock that will help to thwart theft. An Apple representative was not immediately available to comment.

Though he did not specify how the coalition would make manufacturers comply with its demands, Mr. Schneiderman said, “The stakes here are very high and we intend to pursue this with every tool in our toolbox.”

Harvey Levin Picks NFL Winner — ‘I Have a Problem with the Heisman’

Harvey Levin Picks NFL Winner
'I Have a Problem
with the Heisman Trophy'

Put your money on Harvey this week ... 'cause at 2-3, he's due for a BIG victory in our Week 6 matchup -- Vikings vs. Redskins.

Heeeeeeeere we go ...

Question: Who ya got?
Harv: "I'm pretty certain I'm going with the Vikings ... I have a problem with the whole Heisman Trophy thing. I think it's bad luck."

Question: Why?
Harv: "Ever since OJ, it's kinda bothered me ... and then the whole Reggie Bush thing ... and Matt Leinart, it rubs me the wrong way -- not that RGIII isn't a nice guy."

Question: How do you feel about Robert Griffin III?
Harvey: I like him ... and if I were doing 'Star Wars' I would name a robot after him."

Question: Better mascot -- Vikings or Redskins?
Harvey: Having just recently performed 'My Way' at the Pechanga Resort and Casino, I would have to say the Vikings have the less offensive mascot.

News Analysis: Facebook’s Big Problem: Investors Losing Faith

Mario Tama/Getty ImagesFacebook‘s stock price fell on Thursday after some 271 million shares owned by early investors were free to be sold as a lockup period ended.

Want to better understand the crazy world of technology stocks? That requires having a grasp of something that can best be described as the curse of the ordinary.

That curse could mean that Facebook, which is already down by nearly 50 percent from its offering price to $19.05 on Friday, could drop even further.

It’s all about valuations.

Most efforts to judge the right stock market value for a company rely on profit forecasts. But earnings at young technology companies are harder to predict than at businesses using traditional approaches to generate earnings in other industries.

In times of optimism, that knowledge dearth can actually work to the advantage of technology companies. Executives fill that emptiness with promises of paradigm-breaking ways of doing business, prompting Wall Street analysts to project amazing profits. Investors get excited and flock to their stock debuts. In short, it’s all about being seen as extraordinary.

That magic allowed Facebook to go public at a stock price that was an astronomical 100 times its earnings per share. Back in May, investors seemingly had little trouble believing that Facebook could entwine advertising into all interactions on its site and generate extraordinary revenue.

Indeed, each of the companies that have gone public in recent months has needed one main magical story. For Groupon, it was that the company had found a revolutionary marketing tool that was perfect for small businesses. The untapped market was theoretically huge.

But the nightmare begins when investors stop believing in that central story. Earnings don’t have to be terrible, and they haven’t been at the hardest hit firms — Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, the online game company. The earnings just have to contain a few clues that the dream won’t be achieved.

Then, the transition from extraordinary to ordinary is brutal.

Groupon is down 75 percent from its initial public offering. The market now values it as if it were any old marketing company; its shares are trading at 12 times the earnings that analysts are projecting for 2013, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

This is a critical time for Facebook.

The faith level in the company is declining. Right now, Facebook is trading at 31 times the earnings that analysts are expecting for 2013. That’s not too expensive, but it’s far above Google’s 2013 price-to-earnings ratio of 14 times.

One reason investors have fled the stock is that Facebook’s second-quarter earnings showed few signs that it was close to achieving meteoric growth. “There have been almost no positive signals at Facebook in the past six months,” said Anup Srivastava, an assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He thinks Facebook shares should be worth about $12, based on his estimates of the company’s future cash flows.

Such a fate may seem unthinkable, given how far the stock has already fallen. But Facebook may struggle to keep pace with Google, which, though it is a more mature Internet company, is still finding ways to grow fast. In its second quarter, the volume of “paid clicks” (the number of times users click on a link that generates revenue for Google) rose 42 percent from the year-earlier period. That’s the fastest growth since 2007, according to analysts at Nomura. And despite its extraordinary growth, investors still give Google’s shares only an ordinary valuation.

But there’s still hope for Facebook.

Negativity can feed on itself in the stock market, and the over-optimism of the I.P.O. may simply have been replaced with rabid pessimism today. “As with most other young growth stocks, no one really knows Facebook’s value,” said Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at the New York University Stern School of Business. “That means people can overreact in both directions.”

There are ways to get back into investors’ good graces. One is for Facebook to be more convincing when explaining why it’s special.

Since its own I.P.O., LinkedIn has kept investors enthralled. The company trades at 79 times projected 2013 earnings, a clear sign that the market believes the company has created a revolutionary space for companies to recruit.

Then there’s Amazon.com, which is extraordinarily talented at projecting itself as extraordinary. Its shares trade at 100 times its projected 2013 earnings, even though it has reported what might look like disappointing earnings for several years. The dream is that Amazon is well on its way to dominating Internet commerce, and can look forward to prodigious profits.

Amazon.com also shows there’s a way to get investors believing again. Its shares plunged amid fears that it could go bankrupt soon after the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, but in the last 10 years it has regained extraordinary status.

Facebook could use some of that Amazon magic.