Quantum Bullshit

Quantum Computer

 Schneier on Security quotes a paper:

Cheating on Quantum Computing Benchmarks

Peter Gutmann and Stephan Neuhaus have a new paper—I think it’s new, even though it has a March 2025 date—that makes the argument that we shouldn’t trust any of the quantum factorization benchmarks, because everyone has been cooking the books:

Similarly, quantum factorisation is performed using sleight-of-hand numbers that have been selected to make them very easy to factorise using a physics experiment and, by extension, a VIC-20, an abacus, and a dog. A standard technique is to ensure that the factors differ by only a few bits that can then be found using a simple search-based approach that has nothing to do with factorisation…. Note that such a value would never be encountered in the real world since the RSA key generation process typically requires that |p-q| > 100 or more bits . As one analysis puts it, “Instead of waiting for the hardware to improve by yet further orders of magnitude, researchers began inventing better and better tricks for factoring numbers by exploiting their hidden structure”.

A second technique used in quantum factorisation is to use preprocessing on a computer to transform the value being factorised into an entirely different form or even a different problem to solve which is then amenable to being solved via a physics experiment…

Lots more in the paper, which is titled Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog. He points out the largest number that has been factored legitimately by a quantum computer is 35.

Previous posts that mention the word quantum, which may or may not be related to quantum computers.

Via Dennis.

Defeating Zuckerberg's Metaverse, w Stephen Fry

I've tried watching some of Stephen Fry's other videos, but, if I recall correctly, his politics put me off. This one doesn't go into politics much. The first part of the video talks about the history of computers and how computer chips are made now, and that portion is the best I've seen. Then he wanders off into AI (Artificial Intelligence) and quantum computing and he gets all spacey.

I don't know if AI is going to do that much for us. It might enable some whiz kids to develop some fancy new stuff that could make our lives better, but we're still going to be stuck with being human beings, version 1.0.

Entertainment is great, but for all it's amazing forms, it's still just entertainment. The real world is still the basis for our lives. No matter how fancy video games become, they will never compare to interacting with real people.

Quantum-ness

Coding Game Mars Lander

I don't like the multi-verse theory. I like to think that this universe is the only one. Keeps things simpler. On the other hand, there are aspects of the behavior of sub-atomic whatsits (like photons) that don't really make sense. Then there was Plato's (or Aristotle, one of those old Greek dudes) who speculated that the world we experience is only a projection from the real world, something like a shadow on the wall of cave cast by firelight is only a projection of the hand that is casting the shadow.

So I'm thinking that our brains have evolved a sort of imposed order on the primordial soup of sub-atomic whatsits and what we see and experience is what we collectively imagine. If all the people vanished, the universe wouldn't vanish, just our cosmology would. Animals still perceive our world, but (as far as we know), they aren't concerned about the heavens, or sub-atomics whatsits.

We haven't been able to come up with a way to travel to other stars, but given our wild imaginations, I expect that someday we will. And it will be because someone discovers (or imagines) a here-to-for-undiscovered principle.

Right now Obayashi is predicting that we will build a space elevator by the middle of this century. At least they forecast the travel time to orbit will be about a week. First time I've heard a reasonable estimate for that. A week! Ain't nobody got time for that! Gimme a rocket!