8-23-96. Science: "Lattices May Put Security Codes on a Firmer Footing." Miklos Ajtai, a mathematician at IBM Almaden, has provided the kind of guarantee of hardness that cryptographers are looking for. He has proved that examples picked at random from a particular class of problems are, with exceedingly rare exceptions, as hard to solve as the hardest ones imaginable. A code that embedded messages in these problems so that only someone equipped with the answers could decode them would provide something close to a guarantee of security. 8-29-96. WaJo: "Cybersleuths Help Make Java Safe for Browsers." Over the past year, Wallach, Dean, Felten and Balfanz have become self-styled policemen for some of the hottest Internet software around. Like many fellow hackers, they find thrills in the search for others' mistakes. But unlike some of their brethren, they're using their skills to make the software better by informing the companies of their findings, rather than exploiting the errors maliciously. ----- http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/latice.txt (13kb for 2) LAT_ice ---------- Seth Lloyd, MIT, has a 5-page report on "Universal Quantum Simulators" in Science of 23 August, which confirms Feynman's 1982 conjecture that quantum computers can be programmed to simulate any local quantum system. There are quite a few equations so we have not scanned it to .txt. However, we will scan as JPEG images for those who are interested. Send us a blank message with subject UQS_fey. There will be a delay to honor knothead labor, me.