IFA 2013: Sony hands-ons

introduction

Sony has deconstructed its best smartphone and put it back together into something amazing. The Xperia Z1 (codename Honami) is a powerful, camera-centric flagship backed up by the QX line of attachable camera modules and the SmartWatch 2.

The Sony Xperia Z1 takes some of the highlights of the original Xperia Z - the gorgeous OmniBalance design, a 5" 1080p screen, water resistant body - and kicks everything else into overdrive. The major crowd puller is the 20.7MP camera with G Lens and big 1/2.3" sensor, but the display tech is new and improved and the Snapdragon 800 chipset is the current chart-topper.

   
Meeting up with the Sony Xperia Z1

The 1/2.3" sensor is as big as what most point-and-shoots have, as well as the Samsung Galaxy Camera and Galaxy S4 zoom hybrids. True, it's smaller than Nokia's 1020 PureView imager, but Sony didn't compromise the build - the Xperia Z1 is 8.5mm thick throughout, there are no humps to hurt pocketability (and desirability).The Sony Xperia Z1 price has been set for £599 ($936.48) in the UK. The range in other countries including France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands start as high as €679 and as high as €865 ($849.99-$1140.16). 

Sony Xperia Z1 at a glance

• General: Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, penta-band UMTS/HSPA, 100 Mbps LTE
• Form factor: Water-resistant camera phone
• Dimensions: 144 x 74 x 8.5 mm, 170g
• Display: 5" 16M-color 1080p (441ppi) capacitive touchscreen TFT Triluminous display with X-Reality and OptiContrast
• Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8974 Snapdragon 800, quad-core 2.2 GHz Krait 400, Adreno 330, 2GB
• OS: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
• Camera: 20.7MP camera with 1/2.3" Exmor RS sensor and Sony G Lens, F/2.0 aperture; 2MP front-facing camera
• Video camera: 1080p video capture with HDR mode
• Memory: 16GB storage, microSD card slot, up to 64GB
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, standard microUSB port with MHL and USB host, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, NFC
• Battery: Sealed 3,000mAh battery
• Misc: IP58 certified - dust-sealed and water resistant beyond 1 meter; shatter proof and scratch-resistant glass for the front and the back panel, metal frame on the sides

Today, top cameras are put on top phones and you pay for both. Plus, even the ones with impressive imaging credentials like the Xperia Z1 lack the optical zoom or stabilization of dedicated cameras, which on the other hand come short of features and apps, not to mention skimp on screen size and resolution.

 
Sony Cyber-shot QX100 and QX10

Enter the new QX line of lens-style cameras that allow you to enhance any smartphone with a 10x zoom or a large 1" sensor borrowed from Sony's acclaimed RX100 II camera. Each QX camera contains its own lens, image sensor and battery and uses NFC and Wi-Fi for pairing and communication with the phone.

IFA 2013: Sony hands-ons

MOBILES-AND-PDAS

HTC, Tata Docomo launch the 'One dual SIM' for Rs. 53,590 in India

By abhinandmanalayam

on

06-09-2013Share:

HTC has tied up with Tata Docomo to launch the One Dual SIM smartphone in India. The smartphone supports both GSM and CDMA network.

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HTC has partnered with Tata Docomo to launch a dual SIM variant of the HTC One, called the HTC One dual SIM. The smartphone offers GSM and CDMA network support and is available for Rs. 53,590 in India. The phone was recently spotted at online retailers at Rs. 46,495.

The HTC Dual SIM+ has the same features as the HTC One, with a 4.7-inch LCD panel with 468ppi and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU 1.7GHz processor. It has a 4MP UltraPixel camera with OIS and a 2.1MP front camera for video calling. The phone runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with the Sense 5 user interface and ZOE technology. 

Other features included are BoomSound speakers, Beats Audio integration, and a 2,300 mAh battery. One of the main features that differentiate the One and One dual SIM is that the latter has a 64 GB MicroSD expandable memory. 

HTC South Asia President Jack Yang stated at the launch, "Dual SIM smartphones are becoming more popular as they allow consumers to take advantage of the most effective network coverage in the vicinity of the user for the best possible connections." He added that dual SIM smartphones makes it easy to track mobile usage and separate spending on work and personal usage. 

"This phone (HTC One) uses the dual networks (GSM and CDMA) of Tata Docomo to offer great data & voice experience to customers. Our innovative offerings will appeal to both individual and business customers who desire a data rich experience," Tata Docomo Head (Non Voice Services) Sunil Tandon said. 

Source: ET

HTC, Tata Docomo launch the 'One dual SIM' for Rs. 53,590 in India

Top 10 Banned Apps On BYOD Devices ON IPHONE,ANDROID

Top 10 Banned Apps On BYOD Devices

Bangalore: The BYOD trend that moves office to the coziness of your device is catching up fast. Smartphones and tablets are particularly popular devices of this trend. It may look cool but there are other sides to the trend: companies can place restriction on what you can – and can't – install on your BYOD Smartphone or tablet for security and productivity concerns. Read on to know top 10 iOS and Android apps that are banned on BYOD devices, as compiled by ZDNet.

The Common apps on both platforms that are banned

#1 Dropbox

Dropbox is a file hosting service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. It allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronizes so that it appears to be the same folder with the same contents regardless of which computer is used to view it. Files placed in this folder also are accessible through a website and mobile phone applications.

#2 Facebook

The Facebook app on iOS and Android helps to keep up with friends in a easy way. You can see what friends are up to; share updates, photos and videos; get notified when friends like and comment on your posts; text, chat and have group conversations; play games and more.

#3 Angry Birds

Angry Birds, the popular addictive game by Rovio Entertainment, features challenging physics-based game play and hours of replay value. Each level requires logic, skill, and force to solve.

#4 Netflix

Netflix is on-demand Internet streaming media which is available as a app for both the platforms. You can watch TV episodes and movies on your Smartphone or tablet. The app helps you for smoot browsing between vedios and good user interface.

#5 Sugarsync

SugarSync is a cloud service that enables active synchronization of files across computers and other devices for file backup, access, syncing and sharing from a variety of operating systems, such as Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android and others. The program automatically refreshes its sync by constantly monitoring changes to files—additions, deletions, edits—and syncs these changes with any other linked devices as well as the SugarSync servers.

Apps specific to Android platform

#1 Google+

Google+, is the second-largest social networking site in the world, having surpassed Twitter in January 2013. With Google+ Android app you can enjoy magazine style layout in the tablet version; automatically share photos to an Event with Party Mode; turn on Auto Backup to save full resolution photos and videos privately on Google+; check out the What’s Hot stream to see trending topics; view the Nearby stream to see what people near your location are saying.

#2 Google+ Hangouts

Google+ Hangouts is an instant messaging and video chat app for Android.  It has three messaging products that Google had implemented concurrently within its services, including Talk, Google+ Messenger, and Hangouts, a video chat system present within Google+.

#3 Google Play Movies & TV

Google Play Movies & TV allows you to watch movies and TV shows purchased on Google Play.

You can stream instantly on your Android phone or tablet, or download so you can watch from anywhere, even when you’re not connected. Also, get quick access to your personal video collection, including those taken on your phone or tablet.

#4 Google Play Books

With this app you can choose from millions of titles on Google Play including new releases, New York Times best sellers, up-and-coming authors, and free books. You can personalize your reading experience, pick up where you left off on your phone, tablet, or computer.

#5 Google Play Music

Google Play Music makes it easy to discover, play and share the music you love on Android and the web. You can play millions of songs on Google Play, listen to radio with no limits, and enjoy playlists handcrafted by music experts. You can also add up to 20,000 of your own songs from your personal music collections; access your music anywhere without syncing, and save your favorites for offline playback; experience music without ads and other services.

Apps specific to iOS

#1 BoxNet

BoxNet is an online file sharing and Cloud content management service for enterprise companies. The company has adopted a freemium business model, and provides up to 10 GB of free storage for personal accounts. A mobile version of the service is available for Android, BlackBerry, iOS, WebOS, and Windows Phone devices.

#2 Google Drive

Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service provided by Google, which enables user cloud storage, file sharing and collaborative editing. It is now the home of Google Docs, a suite of productivity applications that offer collaborative editing on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

#3 Pandora

Pandora app is free personalized radio that only plays music you’ll love. Just start with the name of one of your favorite artists, songs or classical composers and Pandora will create a custom "station" that plays similar music.

#4 SkyDrive

SkyDrive is a file hosting service that allows users to upload and sync files to cloud storage and then access them from a Web browser or their local device. With SkyDrive for iOS, you can now easily access, manage, and share files on the go. You can also upload photos or videos from your iPhone or iPad to SkyDrive.

#5 HOCCER

HOCCER is an app for fast, easy and secure file transfer and data exchange. You can share pictures, music, contacts, bookmarks, messages and arbitrary files with simple gestures like dragging or throw n' catch to nearby recipients. No setup, no user accounts are required.

Top 10 Banned Apps On BYOD Devices ON IPHONE,ANDROID

Inflatable Antennae Could Give CubeSats Greater Reach: Design Inflates With Powder That Turns Into Gas

Sep. 6, 2013 — The future of satellite technology is getting small -- about the size of a shoebox, to be exact. These so-called "CubeSats," and other small satellites, are making space exploration cheaper and more accessible: The minuscule probes can be launched into orbit at a fraction of the weight and cost of traditional satellites.

But with such small packages come big limitations -- namely, a satellite's communication range. Large, far-ranging radio dishes are impossible to store in a CubeSat's tight quarters. Instead, the satellites are equipped with smaller, less powerful antennae, restricting them to orbits below those of most geosynchronous satellites.

Now researchers at MIT have come up with a design that may significantly increase the communication range of small satellites, enabling them to travel much farther in the solar system: The team has built and tested an inflatable antenna that can fold into a compact space and inflate when in orbit.

The antenna significantly amplifies a radio signal, allowing a CubeSat to transmit data back to Earth at a higher rate. The distance that can be covered by a satellite outfitted with an inflatable antenna is seven times farther than that of existing CubeSat communications.

"With this antenna you could transmit from the moon, and even farther than that," says Alessandra Babuscia, who led the research as a postdoc at MIT. "This antenna is one of the cheapest and most economical solutions to the problem of communications."

The team, led by Babuscia, is part of Professor Sara Seager's research group and also includes graduate students Benjamin Corbin, Mary Knapp, and Mark Van de Loo from MIT, and Rebecca Jensen-Clem from the California Institute of Technology. The researchers, from MIT's departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, have detailed their results in the journalActa Astronautica.

'Magic' powder

An inflatable antenna is not a new idea. In fact, previous experiments in space have successfully tested such designs, though mostly for large satellites: To inflate these bulkier antennae, engineers install a system of pressure valves to fill them with air once in space -- heavy, cumbersome equipment that would not fit within a CubeSat's limited real estate.

Babuscia raises another concern: As small satellites are often launched as secondary payloads aboard rockets containing other scientific missions, a satellite loaded with pressure valves may backfire, with explosive consequences, jeopardizing everything on board. This is all the more reason, she says, to find a new inflation mechanism.

The team landed on a lighter, safer solution, based on sublimating powder, a chemical compound that transforms from a solid powder to a gas when exposed to low pressure.

"It's almost like magic," Babuscia explains. "Once you are in space, the difference in pressure triggers a chemical reaction that makes the powder sublimate from the solid state to the gas state, and that inflates the antenna."

Testing an inflating idea

Babuscia and her colleagues built two prototype antennae, each a meter wide, out of Mylar; one resembled a cone and the other a cylinder when inflated. They determined an optimal folding configuration for each design, and packed each antenna into a 10-cubic-centimeter space within a CubeSat, along with a few grams of benzoic acid, a type of sublimating powder. The team tested each antenna's inflation in a vacuum chamber at MIT, lowering the pressure to just above that experienced in space. In response, the powder converted to a gas, inflating both antennae to the desired shape.

The group also tested each antenna's electromagnetic properties -- an indication of how well an antenna can transmit data. In radiation simulations of both the conical and cylindrical designs, the researchers observed that the cylindrical antenna performed slightly better, transmitting data 10 times faster, and seven times farther, than existing CubeSat antennae.

An antenna made of thin Mylar, while potentially powerful, can be vulnerable to passing detritus in space. Micrometeroids, for example, can puncture a balloon, causing leaks and affecting an antenna's performance. But Babuscia says the use of sublimating powder can circumvent the problems caused by micrometeroid impacts. She explains that a sublimating powder will only create as much gas as needed to fully inflate an antenna, leaving residual powder to sublimate later, to compensate for any later leaks or punctures.

The group tested this theory in a coarse simulation, modeling the inflatable antenna's behavior with different frequency of impacts to assess how much of an antenna's surface may be punctured and how much air may leak out without compromising its performance. The researchers found that with the right sublimating powder, the lifetime of a CubeSat's inflatable antenna may be a few years, even if it is riddled with small holes.

Babuscia says future tests may involve creating tiny holes in a prototype and inflating it in a vacuum chamber to see how much powder would be required to keep the antenna inflated. She is now continuing to refine the antenna design at JPL.

"In the end, what's going to make the success of CubeSat communications will be a lot of different ideas, and the ability of engineers to find the right solution for each mission," Babuscia says. "So inflatable antennae could be for a spacecraft going by itself to an asteroid. For another problem, you'd need another solution. But all this research builds a set of options to allow these spacecraft, made directly by universities, to fly in deep space."

Inflatable Antennae Could Give CubeSats Greater Reach: Design Inflates With Powder That Turns Into Gas

Powerful Jets Discovered Blowing Material out of Galaxy

Sep. 5, 2013 — Astronomers using a worldwide network of radio telescopes have found strong evidence that a powerful jet of material propelled to nearly light speed by a galaxy's central black hole is blowing massive amounts of gas out of the galaxy. This process, they said, is limiting the growth of the black hole and the rate of star formation in the galaxy, and thus is a key to understanding how galaxies develop.

Astronomers have theorized that many galaxies should be more massive and have more stars than is actually the case. Scientists proposed two major mechanisms that would slow or halt the process of mass growth and star formation -- violent stellar winds from bursts of star formation and pushback from the jets powered by the galaxy's central, supermassive black hole.

"With the finely-detailed images provided by an intercontinental combination of radio telescopes, we have been able to see massive clumps of cold gas being pushed away from the galaxy's center by the black-hole-powered jets," said Raffaella Morganti, of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Groningen.

The scientists studied a galaxy called 4C12.50, nearly 1.5 billion light-years from Earth. They chose this galaxy because it is at a stage where the black-hole "engine" that produces the jets is just turning on.

As the black hole, a concentration of mass so dense that not even light can escape, pulls material toward it, the material forms a swirling disk surrounding the black hole. Processes in the disk tap the tremendous gravitational energy of the black hole to propel material outward from the poles of the disk.

At the ends of both jets, the researchers found clumps of hydrogen gas moving outward from the galaxy at 1,000 kilometers per second. One of the clouds has much as 16,000 times the mass of the Sun, while the other contains 140,000 times the mass of the Sun. The larger cloud, the scientists said, is roughly 160 by 190 light-years in size.

"This is the most definitive evidence yet for an interaction between the swift-moving jet of such a galaxy and a dense interstellar gas cloud," Morganti said. "We believe we are seeing in action the process by which an active, central engine can remove gas -- the raw material for star formation -- from a young galaxy," she added.

The scientists also said their observations indicate that the jets from the galaxy's core can stretch and deform clouds of interstellar gas to expand their "pushing" effect beyond the narrow width of the jets themselves. In addition, they reported that, at 4C12.50's stage of development, the jets may turn on and off and so periodically repeat the process of removing gas from the galaxy.

In July, another team of scientists, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), announced they had found gas being blown from a more-nearby galaxy, called NGC 253, by an intense burst of star formation.

"Both processes are thought to be at work, often simultaneously, in young galaxies to regulate the growth of their central black holes as well as the rate at which they can form new stars," Morganti said.

Morganti and her team used radio telescopes in Europe and the U.S., combining their signals to make one giant, intercontinental telescope.

In the U.S., these included the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a continent-wide system of radio telescopes ranging from Hawaii, across the U.S. mainland, to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, and one antenna from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. The European radio telescopes they used are in Effelsberg, Germany; Westerbork, the Netherlands; and Onsala, Sweden.

The extremely high resolving power, or ability to see fine detail, provided by such a far-flung system was essential to pinpointing the location of the gas clouds affected by the galaxy's jets.

Morganti worked with Judit Fogasy of the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary; Zsolt Paragi of the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe; Tom Oosterloo of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Groningen; and Monica Orienti of Italy's National Institute of Astrophysics -- Institute of Radioastronomy. The researchers published their findings in the 6 September issue of the journal Science.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc
.

Powerful Jets Discovered Blowing Material out of Galaxy

Interstellar Winds Buffeting Our Solar System Have Shifted Direction

Sep. 5, 2013 — Scientists, including University of New Hampshire astrophysicists involved in NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, have discovered that the particles streaming into the solar system from interstellar space have likely changed direction over the 40 y77

The finding helps scientists map our location within the Milky Way galaxy and is crucial for understanding our place in the cosmos through the vast sweep of time -- where we've come from, where we're currently located, and where we're going in our journey through the galaxy.

Additionally, scientists now gain deeper insight into the dynamic nature of the interstellar winds, which has major implications on the size, structure, and nature of our sun's heliosphere -- the gigantic bubble that surrounds our solar system and helps shield us from dangerous incoming galactic radiation.

The results, based on data spanning four decades from 11 different spacecraft, including IBEX, were published in the journalScience September 5, 2013.

"It was very surprising to find that changes in the interstellar flow show up on such short time scales because interstellar clouds are astronomically large," says Eberhard Möbius, UNH principal scientist for the IBEX mission and co-author on the Sciencepaper. Adds Möbius, "However, this finding may teach us about the dynamics at the edges of these clouds -- while clouds in the sky may drift along slowly, the edges often are quite fuzzy and dynamic. What we see could be the expression of such behavior."

The data from the IBEX spacecraft show that neutral interstellar atoms are flowing into the solar system from a different direction than previously observed. Interstellar atoms flow past Earth as the interstellar cloud surrounding the solar system passes the sun at 23 kilometers per second (50,000 miles per hour).

The latest IBEX measurements of the interstellar wind direction differed from those made by the Ulysses spacecraft in the 1990s. That difference led the IBEX team to compare the IBEX measurements to data gathered by 11 spacecraft between 1972 and 2011. The scientists wanted to gather as much evidence from as many sources as possible to determine whether the newer instruments simply provided more accurate results, or whether the wind direction itself changed over the years.

The various sets of observations relied on three different methods to measure the incoming interstellar wind. IBEX and Ulysses directly measured neutral helium atoms as they coursed through the inner solar system. IBEX's measurements are close to Earth, while Ulysses' measurements were taken between 1.3 and 2 times further from the sun.

In the final analysis, the direction of the wind obtained most recently by IBEX data differs from the direction obtained from the earlier measurements, which strongly suggests the wind itself has changed over time.

"Prior to this study, we were struggling to understand why our current measurements from IBEX differed from those of the past," says co-author Nathan Schwadron, lead scientist for the IBEX Science Operations Center at UNH. "We are finally able to resolve why these fundamental measurements have been changing with time: we are moving through a changing interstellar medium.

Interstellar Winds Buffeting Our Solar System Have Shifted Direction

Virgin Galactic ship shakes its space-flight feathers

The first vehicle purpose-built for carrying tourists into space has now tested not just its wings, but also its feathers.

Although it still hasn't reached space, Virgin Galactic's SpaceshipTwo flew slightly longer and higher than it did on its first powered flight in April – and this time it also deployed a safety mechanism called feathering as it descended back through Earth's atmosphere.

The launch began at approximately 8 am local time yesterday, when the company's WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft took off from Mojave, California. Once it reached an altitude of 14 kilometres, the carrier released SpaceShipTwo to fly by its own rocket power.

The spaceship then broke the sound barrier, accelerating to Mach 1.43 and reaching a maximum altitude of 21 kilometres. The engine burn lasted 20 seconds. That's 4 seconds longer and about 4 kilometres higher than last time, on SpaceShipTwo's first flight.

The craft's rockets will have to sustain a 70 second flight to reach space, but Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson was excited nonetheless. "This is a giant step," he wrote on his blog on Thursday. "Our spaceship is now the highest commercial winged vehicle in history!"

For an onboard view of the flight, you can watch this video shot from the rocket's tail.

On its descent, pilots Mark Stucky and Clint Nichols manoeuvred the craft's wings 65 degrees upwards into a shuttlecock-like position. Called feathering, that creates a powerful drag, allowing a slower, safer re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

Branson's goal is to start commercial services in 2014, carrying an already long list of eager passengers on sub-orbital flights to space. Virgin Galactic signed up its 600th passenger for SpaceShipTwo in June.

Virgin Galactic ship shakes its space-flight feathers

Gravity movie shows the dark side of space flight

Realistically terrifying (Image: Courtesy of Warner Bros Pictures)

It's the dawn of civilian space flight – what better time to scare the wits out of any would-be space tourist thinking of remortgaging to buy a ticket to orbit?Gravity, the new film from Children of Men director Alfonso Cuarón, does that in spades – and in captivating 3D.

Life in space is no picnic. If the unforgiving vacuum doesn't get you, you're at risk from the hypersonic speeds of orbiting objects and the burgeoning space junk we have abandoned in Earth orbit. Never before has a movie set in space made the dangers so viscerally plain.

This high-tech tale of orbital adversity, apparently set in the near future, kicks off with three spacesuited astronauts working on the Hubble Space Telescope, which they have docked to a still-in-service space shuttle. When a spectacular and brilliantly portrayed cosmic catastrophe destroys the shuttle (and, yes, Hubble too, telescope fans) two of the astronauts – played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney – are left adrift to navigate a hazardous orbital scrapyard.

Watching the pair cope with their oxygen running out as they strive to reach other spacecraft for safety is hugely entertaining and seat-of-the-pants suspenseful, due in no small part to Bullock's bravura performance. As you may expect from the title, physics has a lead role, and the screenwriters have done a fantastic job of demonstrating it – from the way tethered astronauts bounce off each other to the orbital mechanics of space debris – with impressive accuracy.

After the initial disaster, Gravity has such a sparse but compelling plot that I can't say much more without spoiling it – not least because with a running time of 91 minutes this is a pretty short film. That said, the compelling portrayal of the astronauts' agony at their plight caused a colleague watching the screening with me to remark that she could not have coped with a single minute's more suspense.

Loving detail

Gravity's storyline wins great credence from the factual space-flight asides that root the fiction in reality. For instance, it is mentioned that if you can drive a Russian Soyuz capsule you can probably also take the helm of a Chinese Shenzhou. This is correct: Shenzhou is indeed derived from a Soyuz design. And the Kessler effect – in which a piece of hypersonic space debris smashes into a spacecraft, starting a chain reaction that generates still more debris – is well shown, too.

This is a CGI-rich movie – filming a drama with A-list actors in low Earth orbit is not feasible just yet. The 3D is pitched just right: it is so subtle that it was not until I saw one of Bullock's tears floating towards me across the cinema that I even noticed it. One oddity, though, is the way the CGI spacesuits, floating in space, had the actors' live faces injected into them: Bullock looks just fine, but Clooney looks astonishingly like Buzz Lightyear much of the time.

If you like New Scientist's space coverage it's a safe bet you'll be blown away by this movie, and it is already being spoken of as an Oscar contender after screenings at the Venice Film Festival. But be warned: Gravity does such a good job of taking you into orbit, you may be happy never to go yourself.

Gravity movie shows the dark side of space flight

How NSA weakens encryption to access internet traffic

The internet is full of holes. The spy agencies in the US and UK have forced technology suppliers to deliberately weaken security measures in the online computing systems that everyone uses. As a result they may have compromised everybody's security - since the vulnerabilities can be exploited by anybody who discovers them.

The revelations appear in the latest batch of NSA and GCHQ documentsleaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, now an exile in Russia.

The leaks appear to confirm long-held suspicions that the agencies covertly collude with tech firms to introduce "back doors" that bypass built-in computer security measures - like passwords, two-factor authentication and encryption - to get straight to the files they want.

Today's joint reports from The Guardian, The New York Times and website ProPublica might leave you with the impression that the agencies have made a mathematical breakthrough that renders encryption defunct. But the NSA has simply relied on plain old-fashioned spying to influence and infiltrate the internet security firms we trust.

"I'm pretty sure they are reporting well-known possibilities of cheating around cryptography," says Markus Kuhn of the University of Cambridge, placing "back doors" in commonly used software to allow the agencies access to secret messages.

One of the leaked documents reveals that the NSA and GCHQ aim to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks, and endpoint communications devices used by targets". An "endpoint communications system" simply means a computer, tablet or cellphone.

For example, most encryption algorithms require a random number generator to produce secure keys. "One of the oldest tricks in the book is to modify the random number generator so it outputs only a tiny subset of all the random numbers it normally should," says Kuhn – a bit like subtly weighing a die to roll 6 more often than it should.

This change would mean the software can only produce a much smaller list of secret keys than it should, though the number of keys is still too vast for you to notice the change without looking closely. If you know about the vulnerability, however, you can attempt to crack encrypted messages using only the smaller list of keys. That makes it more feasible to use brute force to crack the encryption – all you need is enough computing power, which of course the NSA and GCHQ have in abundance.

The Snowden files say the NSA spends $250 million a year on covertly influencing the product designs of technology companies, suggesting inserting such vulnerabilities is a high priority for the agency.

It could also be swiping keys directly from online service providers, says Kuhn. The TLS encryption protocol, which puts the "s" in secure https connections, relies on servers storing a secret key to decrypt incoming messages or transactions. The NSA could bribe a system administrator or otherwise infiltrate the organisation to gain access to these keys, allowing it to decrypt any intercepted traffic to the relevant server.

To avoid the NSA's gaze, Kuhn says people should turn to open-source software, where many people evaluate the underlying code and can identify any attempts to weaken it. "There is going to be a lot of pressure on IT decision-makers to justify why they gambled the security of their infrastructure on some close-sourced offering that is very likely infiltrated by NSA programmes."

Security agencies have the job of both intercepting harmful communications and defending nations from outside attack, but criminals or other nation states could also exploit NSA-mandated backdoors in internet systems. "If they have weakened the structure of the internet in the ways that the revelations say, then they have failed in the mission to protect national critical infrastructure," says Nigel Smart of the University of Bristol, UK.

For security technologist Bruce Schneier, who has helped The Guardianunderstand hundreds of the leaked NSA documents it is covering, it is all a breach too far: he has appealed for engineers on the inside of such tech company security subversion to turn whistleblower and tell their stories. He hopes the information they provide will help the Internet Engineering Task Force, a loose group of researchers and network security experts, "take the internet back" from the surveillance state at its next meeting in November.

Kenny Paterson at Royal Holloway, University of London has previously discovered flaws in the TLS protocol that could allow an attacker access to encrypted data in certain circumstances, but he says these exploits pale in significance if the NSA has direct access to company servers. "You don't know which companies have been required to hand over their secret keys and which haven't."

Many technology firms say they only work with intelligence agencies when legally compelled to – and largely because the right to run telecoms-related services depends on allowing "lawful interception" of their technologies under the terms of the UN's International Telecommunications Union's rules.

But some firms are engineering deep internet surveillance systems, according to a third tranche of product data sheets from the suppliers of wire-tapping and sub-sea cable interception systems, posted on the Wikileaks website.

How NSA weakens encryption to access internet traffic

Quantum chip connected to internet is yours to command

Quantum computing is in the cloud, and you don't need a degree in advanced physics to run your own programs. For the first time, anyone with a web browser will soon be able to log in and run basic algorithms on a quantum chip hooked up to the internet.

A quantum chip processes information in qubits, or quantum bits, which, unlike the digital bits in a regular computer, can be both 0 and 1 at the same time. In theory, this ability should allow quantum computers to offer far speedier computation than current PCs – although devices that can definitely outperform standard machines don't yet exist.

Until now only a few labs around the world have had access to even basicquantum computers. Google recently purchased a D-Wave quantum computer and shares access with NASA and other select researchers, but not with the general public. Questions also remain over just how quantum D-Wave's machine really is, because it operates using a non-mainstream technique called adiabatic quantum computing.

Scientists at the University of Bristol, UK, were concerned that limited availability to any type of quantum computer would mean a dearth of skilled coders when the expected quantum revolution finally arrives.

"A quantum computer can do things faster for you, but someone has to program it, and at the moment there are only a handful of people around the world who would be qualified," says Bristol's Jeremy O'Brien, who led the development of the quantum chip being used in the cloud project.

Quantum sim

The more traditionally quantum chip made at the University of Bristol works by guiding two photons through a series of optical channels. As the photons pass through the chip they become entangled, meaning that a measurement on one influences the outcome when measuring the other. Programming the computer involves tweaking the extent of this entanglement to produce different computations.

Would-be quantum coders will first use an online simulator that lets them practise programming. A tutorial explains the key quantum-mechanical ideas that are central to the device, then guides users through the steps required to adjust the chip and change its output. Once experienced enough, users can ask for permission to connect to the real chip, which is sitting in a lab in Bristol. It will run programs and return results via the internet.

"You can sit on the bus with your mobile phone and do a quantum optics experiment which might never have been seen before," says team memberPeter Shadbolt. The simulator is already online, but the ability to directly access the chip won't launch until 20 September.

Cloudy future

Exactly what a member of the public might want to use the quantum chip for is unclear. And the version being used online only has two qubits, so its processing power is a very limited.

"It's not going to calculate something that your PC couldn't calculate, because it's not at that scale by a long way," says O'Brien. His team has made 6-qubit and 8-qubit computers, but those projects are still in development. In the meantime, they are happy to let others use their older technology for free as a way to encourage engagement.

The beginnings of a quantum cloud should be a fun way to demonstrate the technology for the public, says Scott Aaronson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is not part of the project. And while a 2-qubit device won't be more useful than your regular PC, putting it online might foreshadow how we will access large-scale quantum computers in future, he says.

"If quantum computing does become a practical technology, there will be a relatively small number of quantum computers, which people will access remotely."

Quantum chip connected to internet is yours to command