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It's great to get a good-paying job. It's even better when you live in a city where that good-paying job buys more. After all, $60,000 goes a lot further in Boise, Idaho, than Boston.

Wallethub has looked at average incomes across the country.

The most compelling information—for us at Top/Best/Most—is the list of cities with the highest annual incomes when adjusted for cost of living. One hint: they're all in the middle of the country, and none gives you an ocean view, though one comes close.

No. 5: Colorado Springs, Colo.

The home of the Air Force Academy is also a hub for defense-related firms, and there are more than a few ice skaters here beneath Pikes Peak aspiring to become Olympians. The average annual income is $69,844 based on the 2012 census numbers, and the cost of living index is 92.8. (The lower an index score is below 100, the better.) When adjusted for that cheaper-than-average cost of living, it's actually like making $75,263, according to WalletHub.  But while all those Air Force types may be flying high in Colorado Springs, not everyone else is. Unlike Denver, here in Colorado’s second-largest city, the sale of recreational pot is banned despite a new state law legalizing marijuana.

No. 4: Houston

Here's the one city in the top five where you will get an occasional ocean breeze … or just a lot of humidity. Houston makes the list because America's in the middle of an energy boom. Oil, natural gas, wind, you name it, the boom is powering up average incomes to $69,421, with a cost of living index number of 92.2. Adjusted for cost of living, that's like making $75,303 per year. Even though Houston incomes are slightly lower than the average in Colorado Springs, there are no state income taxes in Texas, helping Houstonians take home more cash.

No. 3: Austin, Texas

See above for an explanation of tax breaks stretching dollars in Texas. Austin makes the list because incomes are going higher as the state capital becomes a hub for tech and music and all things hipster-y. Austin is headquarters for Whole Foods, adding to the whole quinoa-eating, fedora-wearing, cage-free celebrating vibe. The city is also home to the nation's largest urban bat population, and we all know how hip the whole vampire thing is. The cost of living index in Austin is 95.4, but the average income is $74,860, which can buy you a lot of organic gluten-free veggies. (I keep making fun of Austin because I’m jealous.)

No. 2: Atlanta

Hotlanta! This town is a peach of a place to live! Atlanta is headquarters to a wide range of successful empires like Coke, Home Depot, Delta Air Lines and Nene Leakes.

The cost of living index number is 95.5, the highest on the Wallet Hub list. But how affordable is housing? The average income in Atlanta is $78,505. The usual rule of thumb in determining home affordability is to multiply one’s annual income by 2.5. That would mean the average home price should be $196,000. Good news! It’s only $144,000, leaving Atlantans with more money to afford a high-end lifestyle worthy of a “Real Housewife.”

No. 1: Charlotte, N.C.

WHAT?? WHERE?? WHO??? Charlotte is the best city in America for good salaries and low cost of living. Turns out this town is a banking powerhouse, the second-largest financial center in the country behind New York, and New York is not affordable. Not at all.

Charlotte is headquarters for institutions like Bank of America, and is a major center for Wells Fargo, but Chiquita International also calls the city home, because Charlotte is so … wait for it … a-peeling. And why not? The cost of living index number is 93.2, the average annual income is $76,914 (which might feel more like $82,526 based on cost of living), unemployment is 6.6 percent and the so-called Queen City has even designated a local Dairy Queen a historic site. How cool is that?

Source: WalletHub

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Why does this matter?

Mobile phones are now with us for most if not all of our daily lives. From bedside charging at night to the almost permanent place in a pocket or handbag, there is very little in our lives that does not occur within earshot of these devices. In addition, the increase in functionality and capabilities means that much of our daily interactions take place through these devices, from sensitive transactions on mobile banking to the entertaining consumption of videos and websites. It is vital therefore that users can trust their phones to maintain the privacy and security of their activities and communications.

While most of the mobile phones available to consumers are closed systems, one approach to ensure that devices are respecting their users privacy is to make the software running on the device completely transparent by releasing the source code. Without knowledge of, and control over, what information a device broadcasts it is difficult to see how users can trust their device not to betray them.

Further, an artificial division has emerged in the development of software for mobile devices. The operating system, where most users interact with their phone, is the shiny and sleek look and feel of the device, including the suite of applications and built in bells and whistles that come preloaded. For the majority of users concerned about privacy, this is where most attention has been focused to date.

However, the second component is arguably much more relevant when it comes to users privacy -- the baseband. The baseband is responsible for communicating with the mobile operator's network to ensure wireless connectivity is maintained. It also underpins everything in the operating system and has access to most, if not all, content transmitted from the device as well as the unique identifiers of the device. Depending on the design, it may also have access to the content on the device as well.

That is why the Ubuntu Phone displayed so much promise. Since most phones are closed, or only their operating systems are open but not the baseband, it was hoped that Ubuntu Phone would be a first from a major mobile phone manufacturer. OpenMoko was an initial attempt but has since been discontinued.

Open source allows for the examination of code by international experts, modifications and improvements without waiting for the author to find time to implement them, and act as a deterrent against back doors in the code. Such backdoors are common with widely-available mobile phones, leaving many users vulnerable without even knowing it. A recent discovery in Samsung software reportedly allowed for remote access to a devices content via the baseband. Backdoors purportedly inserted for maintenance and debugging may be exploited by criminals and Intelligence Agencies.

The possibility of a fully open-source phone would create significant privacy opportunities, particularly in light of therecent Snowden revelations regarding NSA/GCHQ using malware to indiscriminately infect devices.

Slappin' the baseband

Canonical announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) conference in February that they signed agreements with telcos in Spain and China to deliver Ubuntu-based handsets by the end of 2014. In their press release of the announcement, the company said: “Ubuntu is a free, open-source platform for client, server and cloud computing", and “Ubuntu code is always open, so it’s visible".

So with eagerness, we decided to find out if they were going to make an open-source phone that could provide greater certainty of security and privacy. We asked if the software running on their new device would be entirely open source, including the baseband. The initial response from Canonical was “Everything we build for Ubuntu is open source.” The vagueness of the statement, especially since it hinted that only what they were building would be open source, caused us to press harder.

It was when we received a follow-up that we learned that the baseband for Ubuntu Phone would indeed be distributed in a closed format only, “The baseband software is the firmware that runs in the modem, e.g the chipsets we get from third parties. Therefore, we do not control that part of the solution, that is provided by the chipset vendors, and it is typically binary only”, Canonical told us. What this means is that the user gets the functionality without the ability to examine how the functionality is achieved.

Here's why this is a problem. A phone's baseband can be exploited in a number of ways by malicious external devices that force it to surrender information about the user that can sometimes lead to suppression of protests or even death. A closed baseband does not allow for the examination of one of the most critical components of the phone, which goes against the open-source philosophy many Ubuntu users have come to embrace.

The choice of Canonical to use a binary only baseband is even more disappointing when Osmocom have already produced a functional open-source GSM baseband for the Calypso chipset. One must wonder why was this not adopted or improved upon by the talented individuals at Canonical, especially given the previous enthusiasm for open-source philosophy.

Missed opportunity

The surveillance industry is striving to keep up with communications technology as it evolves from 2G to 3G and now to 4G.  It is disappointing that Ubuntu failed to provide an open baseband implementation that researchers could experiment with. This would have provided a deterrent against backdoors and allow for the development of techniques to mitigate the effects of IMSI catchers, potentially detect their use, and alert the user.

If Canonical and Ubuntu are to ensure the Ubuntu Phone is to be embraced as a clear alternative to other systems, especially by the privacy and security community that so often use their products, a future version of the software must adopt the fully open-source philosophy again. This would provide the much-needed trust in their devices that are increasingly essential to our lives.

In the fight to prove it really has developed a quantum computer,D-Wave Systems may have won a big round.

In a paper published on arXiv.org, researchers from University College London, and the University of Southern California compared the data obtained from a D-Wave computer with three possible explanations from classical physics, and one from the type of quantum computing that D-Wave is pursuing. None of the classical outcomes fit the data, while the quantum outcome fit the data from the machine.

If proved out, the results will be a significant boost for D-Wave, a 13-year-old company that has won contracts with Lockheed Martinand a joint research endeavor by Google and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as significant skepticism from many academic quantum physicists. Taking an applied approach sharply different from that previously tried by most academics, D-Wave has reported computing gains vastly better than anyone else.

Scientists at D-Wave, which is based in British Columbia, were quick to cheer the results.

“This is analogous with the transition from classical physics to relativity,” said Colin Williams, a quantum physicist who serves as D-Wave’s director of business development. “This slays the objections.”

Not entirely. “What I think is going on here is that they didn’t model the ‘noise’ correctly,” said Umesh Vazirani, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He was referring to possible distortions to the data caused by a technique in the experiment that effectively turned up the temperature, affecting the behavior of qubits. “One should have a little more respect with the truth.”

Quantum computing proposes to solve problems using properties of quantum physics that differ from the classical understanding of matter. In quantum physics, subatomic particles can inhabit a range of states, even at the same time, and appear to affect one another over great distances – even, it is posited, across different universes.

The kind of computing D-Wave pursues seeks to define a problem’s answer in terms of an optimal outcome among a near-infinitude of possibilities. This is analogous to the way a plant uses quantum processes to efficiently harvest sunlight for carbohydrates in photosynthesis

Mr. Vazirani seemed more charitable to D-Wave than in the past. In January, he and others published a paper of their own that indicated D-Wave had not cracked quantum computing. Since then, he said, “after talking with them I feel a lot better about them. They are working hard to prove quantum computing.”

In a paper also published on arXiv.org in January, scientists from D-Wave, U.S.C., and the University of British Columbia said they had found evidence in their machine of quantum entanglement, which is when one unit, or qubit, can affect another without direct contact.

“None of the classical models show what D-Wave hardware does,” said Mr. Williams.<??

While the controversy has gone on for years, it may reach an end within a year or two. Mr. Williams said that in April, D-Wave will be conducting experiments with a machine managing over 1,000 qubits, about twice the number currently inside its best machine.

A 2,000-qubit machine is scheduled for the end of the year, and will be ready for experiments within a few months after that. If D-Wave can rapidly solve the kind of large problems a machine like that is expected to, that would perhaps be the most persuasive evidence possible that we have entered a new computing era.

Source: Bits Blogs | NYTIMES

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