181–190 of 200 posts
I need HN's classic pessimism to know if this is something to be excited about. Please chime in!
I wouldn't trust HN one bit (or one qubit) to comment usefully on this question, but presumably hundreds of people are already bugging Scott Aaronson to blog about it. He'll probably have a post in the next couple days saying whether we have permission to be excited.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Crypto will be safe against quantum computers.
Can you expand on this? I find this topic difficult to find solid information on, for some reason.
I'm not sure about the downsides of quantum-resistant DSAs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can break bitcoin, you can also break all the encryption we use for banking and other transactions, so might as well stock up on SPAM and ammo.
It's an on issue, since bank can always switch to face-in-face verification. This is not an argument. Crypto is the problem here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can fundamentally break most asymmetric encryption, which is a good thing iff you want to do things that require forging signatures. Things like jailbreaks Apple can't patch, decryption tools that can break all E2E encryption, being able to easily steal your neighbor's Facebook login at the coffee shop... Come to think of it, maybe we shouldn't invent quantum computers[0]. [0] Yes, even with the upside of perman…
No you can't. Largest factored number using shor's algorithm is 21. No other algorithm scales to crypto levels.
I'm doing theorical research in the topological quantum computing. The idea behind topological quantum computing is to utilize quantum materials whose low-energy physics looks like an error correcting code. Since these systems are very large (macroscopic number of atoms), the error rates are (theoretically) very low, ie the qubit is fault tolerant by construction, without any additional error correction. In reality,…
I know nothing about quantum computing, but constructing a physical system that resembles error correcting codes sounds absolutely fascinating.
I'm doing theorical research in the topological quantum computing. The idea behind topological quantum computing is to utilize quantum materials whose low-energy physics looks like an error correcting code. Since these systems are very large (macroscopic number of atoms), the error rates are (theoretically) very low, ie the qubit is fault tolerant by construction, without any additional error correction. In reality,…
In my opinion, the citations above do not represent a balanced view of the Majorana field status but are rather negative. We published two experimental papers recently that went through a rigorous peer review process. Additionally, we have engaged with the DARPA team to validate our results, and we actually have them measuring our devices in our Redmond lab.
Finally, we have exciting new results that we just shared with many experts in the field at the Station Q conference in Santa Barbara. These new experiments further probe our qubits and give us additional confidence that we are indeed operating topological qubits. We will share more broadly at the upcoming APS March meeting. For more information, please see the following post by my colleague Roman Lutchyn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/roman-lutchyn-bb9a382_interfe... ."
I'm doing theorical research in the topological quantum computing. The idea behind topological quantum computing is to utilize quantum materials whose low-energy physics looks like an error correcting code. Since these systems are very large (macroscopic number of atoms), the error rates are (theoretically) very low, ie the qubit is fault tolerant by construction, without any additional error correction. In reality,…
I’m an experimentalist at Microsoft Quantum who was involved in the work presented in our recent Nature publication. As an experimentalist, I can say these results are very exciting and would emphasize that the data are coming from real devices in the lab, not just theories. In the Nature paper, we present data from two different devices to demonstrate that the results are reproducible, and we performed additional me…
It is very cool to hear from you!
> In my opinion, the citations above do not represent a balanced view of the Majorana field status but are rather negative.
That's true, but the goal of the citations was to demonstrate there are some negative opinions too. Maybe together with positive OP these form a balanced view.
I understand that it can be very unpleasant to have people like Frolov or Legg trying to prove you're wrong, but I think it shoudn't be personal (from either side). Trying to find alternative explainations is part of science. And Frolov did turn out correct in past, and we did think we found Majoranas when in fact we didn't, and this part of the story can't be just ignored. Citing Feynman "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool". While it's tempting to dismiss the critics as broken record, I think it would both increase the credibility of the studies and improve the science if their criticism was taken at the face value. Answering specific points publicly would also create more balanced picture. I'm not aware of the responses to the cited opinions that I could cite to "balance out."
> We published two experimental papers recently that went through a rigorous peer review process.
Peer review is important, but is not the answer to specific claims, eg that TGP accuracy is overestimated, or (if we take Henry's word for it) the promised errata that never came out.
> Finally, we have exciting new results that we just shared with many experts in the field at the Station Q conference in Santa Barbara.
I've read about it from Das Sarma's twitter [1]. It does indeed sound exciting. If you're able to manipulate, store, and read out quantum data from qubit, then I think people will have easier time to agree you have one. There is of course question of non-Clifford gates, but that's a separate problem.
> We will share more broadly at the upcoming APS March meeting.
I look forward to hearing about it. If you (or someone from your team) are interested, I'd love to meet and chat at MM. My contacts are in bio.
Edit: I've also now seen Chetan Nayak's comment in Scott Aaronson blog with some details [2].
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an on issue, since bank can always switch to face-in-face verification. This is not an argument. Crypto is the problem here.
Beating face verification is quite honestly a far easier thing to break than encryption my friend.
Centralized businesses will not suffer much and will switch. Blockchains will get destroyed due to their immutable nature.
So when does this break crypto and Bitcoin and how to best prepare for this? Is there any way to secure at all?
Cryptocoins like Bitcoin only need DSA. Quantum-proof DSAs have been widely known since the 1970s*. Bitcoin only needs to change its DSA - and then everything will be fine. * see Lamport signatures
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand on this? I find this topic difficult to find solid information on, for some reason.
I'm not sure about other cryptocoins, but Bitcoin does not use encryption, it only uses authentication, which requires a DSA (Digital Signature Algorithms). Bitcoin's current DSA would in fact be broken by a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer (CRQC). However, there are DSAs - like Lamport signatures and Merkle signatures - known since the 1970s, whose security depends only on the existence of ANY secure hash…