Feels a bit nice to live not only with the disturbance caused by unpredictability of AI, but by unpredictability of QC too, refreshing
Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
51–60 of 118 posts
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#52This site is almost impossible to read on mobile unless you have good vision. Normally I can just hit the button in my phone browser to read it in reader mode, but this site doesn’t support that either. It’s a shame. I am surprised that in 2026 more websites don’t seem so concerned about responsive design, especially when the goal is to read the content.
Yeah, I have the same issue (Firefox). Every website nowadays should have a responsive layout that works for smartphones.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#53This site is almost impossible to read on mobile unless you have good vision. Normally I can just hit the button in my phone browser to read it in reader mode, but this site doesn’t support that either. It’s a shame. I am surprised that in 2026 more websites don’t seem so concerned about responsive design, especially when the goal is to read the content.
Reading mode in your browser…?
> Normally I can just hit the button in my phone browser to read it in reader mode, but this site doesn’t support that either.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#54Sooo it’s essentially claiming that the impossible thing is essentially a bit less impossible, but currently still impossible. Nice
The whole thing is that we have proofs that this is possible, and have been seeing continuous engineering progress. Having followed this for awhile, it seems to me that saying quantum computing is "still impossible" at this stage is like saying that GTA VI is still impossible, based on its unpredictable timelines.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#55Sooo it’s essentially claiming that the impossible thing is essentially a bit less impossible, but currently still impossible. Nice
The whole thing is that we have proofs that this is possible, and have been seeing continuous engineering progress. Having followed this for awhile, it seems to me that saying quantum computing is "still impossible" at this stage is like saying that GTA VI is still impossible, based on its unpredictable timelines.
Sorry, I meant a quantum computer that is actually built where these theories can actually be applied. Current quantum computers are as useful as current nuclear fusion reactors.
I am just over any sensational headlines from the past 10 years. They really need to drop a tweet like "Check out my quantum computer that is actually useful" like Sam Altman did with GPT to convince me.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#56I worked at a quantum computing company that builds superconducting QC chips (so, not really applicable to one of the “bombshells” from the article). My team was designing the software stack which allows to control the QC, run quantum jobs/algorithms, and calibrate the parameters. I’ve made two attempts to explain the work we’ve been doing and to explain the current realistic state of the industry: 1. A talk at PyCon…
If they're going public I imagine they already sell some kind of QC chips. But, like, who buys them? Yesterday there was a new paper [1] that shows how Shor's algorithm could break realistic encryptions with as little as 10,000 qubits (instead of millions), but as far as I know quantum hardware is still orders of magnitude below even that target. So how big can the market actually be? Shipping to universities or othe…
During my 3.7 years at the company, we had dozens of sales of full-stack quantum computers, chips + cryostat + control electronics + software, ranging from 5 to ~100 physical qubits. Naturally, the buyers are mostly research institutions and univercities who need a real quantum computer to do research on quantum computation and simulation (to a lesser degree with the superconducting technology, though).
(Often the research is done purely within clasically-simulated quantum computers, i.e. virtual QCs, but to verify and make the research publishable they need to run at least partial sub-problems on a real chip.)
Another, smaller, market is HPC centers. They buy and install quantum computers into existing HPC infrastructure because a) they have a few customers who need it (sometimes those same research institutions/universities), and b) they need to solve the integration problem for the future when QCs are actually used for real-world problems and big customers come to HPCs to run both classical and quantum high-performance jobs.
Here is an excerpt from my book I linked above, just to give a bit more context:
---
Since quantum computers are essentially analog devices that allow you to control, in a limited fashion, a set of quantum objects, you can do some research in foundational quantum physics. [...] Still, given the current state of the industry, classical computers outperform most quantum systems. But the research applied to smaller QCs can be scaled once the hardware scales.
Of course, the main area is quantum computing itself. From abstract, mathematical notions of algorithms to very low-level questions of calibration, many universities and research organizations are eager to have a quantum computer available to prove their theories and discover new properties. Commercial companies that deal with material science, battery technology, agriculture, and chemistry are buying quantum computers (or at least buying access to one) because they want to be ready if and when truly large-scale QCs become available. [...]
And finally, integration research. This is the least known and least discussed topic in the industry but is very important. Its significance is one of the motivations for writing this book. Quantum computers, being research tools, are not normal products. They are driven by software, like anything else, but this software changes rapidly and is rarely written with long-term evolution in mind. If you buy a quantum computer today, chances are your code will not work on any other quantum computer, or even on the next iteration of the same machine. At the same time, researchers often need to work with multiple types of machines simultaneously, and HPC (high-performance computing) centers, i.e. supercomputing data centers, want to integrate quantum computers into their existing infrastructure and provide a "quantum compute" service to their users.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#57I worked at a quantum computing company that builds superconducting QC chips (so, not really applicable to one of the “bombshells” from the article). My team was designing the software stack which allows to control the QC, run quantum jobs/algorithms, and calibrate the parameters. I’ve made two attempts to explain the work we’ve been doing and to explain the current realistic state of the industry: 1. A talk at PyCon…
If they're going public I imagine they already sell some kind of QC chips. But, like, who buys them? Yesterday there was a new paper [1] that shows how Shor's algorithm could break realistic encryptions with as little as 10,000 qubits (instead of millions), but as far as I know quantum hardware is still orders of magnitude below even that target. So how big can the market actually be? Shipping to universities or othe…
>There is zero profit to be made at the end of the chain.
Think of all the "sales" that comprise such things as space missions (ones without immediate real-world use) or large hadron collider. Or any other large, expensive, long scientific project. If you measure the outcome purely in money within decades, these things can be said to be zero or negative profit.
How much profit was at the end of the chain of the current Artemis lunar mission? Well, zero or negative, but lots of companies and people up the chain made meaningful progress and made a living. Quantum computing is just like that in my opinion.
The biggest problem in my eyes is the "game" of commercialization. This technology is in early research phase, but it's so expensive and not immediately game-changing that the public funding was never enough. So, companies started to play the "we sell products" and "we do IPO" games, which IMO doesn't make sense.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#58One thing I find rather amazing about all of this is the degree to which the Bitcoin community has tried, for years, to claim that quantum computers will be another other than a complete break. Sure, it takes a pretty nice quantum computer or a pretty good algorithm or a degree of malice on the part of miners to break pay-to-script-hash if your wallet has the right properties, but that seems like a pretty weak excuse…
If Bitcoin is broken then your bank encryption and everything else is broken also. As far as I know quantum computers still can't even honestly factor 7x3=21, so you are good. And the 5x3=15 is iffy about how honest that was either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45082587 Bitcoin uses 256-bit encryption, it's a universe away from 5x3=15.
Your bank doesn’t depend only on cryptography. It would be still a lot of effort to simply make transfer from a bank account. Quantum computer will not magically give an answer for a password of a hash you don’t have. TLS is moving to post quantum as we speak.
For crypto currency you have all the data you need to break whole system ready in your hands as you will be able to produce private key from public keys of wallets. Cryptocurrency depends only on cryptography.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Bitcoin is broken then your bank encryption and everything else is broken also. As far as I know quantum computers still can't even honestly factor 7x3=21, so you are good. And the 5x3=15 is iffy about how honest that was either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45082587 Bitcoin uses 256-bit encryption, it's a universe away from 5x3=15.
> If Bitcoin is broken then your bank encryption and everything else is broken also. Its a lot easier for your bank to change encryption methods than it is for bitcoin. Presumably you mean TLS here (where else do banks use encryption? Disk encryption?). People are already deploying experiments with quantum-proof TLS. > As far as I know quantum computers still can't even honestly factor 7x3=21, so you are good. And th…
I still don’t really get the argument, like okay this extremely rich theoretical attacker can obtain the private key for the cert my service uses, and somehow they’re able to sniff my traffic and could then somehow extract creds. But that doesn’t give them my 2fa which is needed to book each transaction, and as soon as these attacks are in the wild anti fraud/surveillance systems will be in much harder mode.
I don’t see QC coming as meaning bank accounts will be emptied.
disclaimer: I work at a bank on such systems
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#60One thing I find rather amazing about all of this is the degree to which the Bitcoin community has tried, for years, to claim that quantum computers will be another other than a complete break. Sure, it takes a pretty nice quantum computer or a pretty good algorithm or a degree of malice on the part of miners to break pay-to-script-hash if your wallet has the right properties, but that seems like a pretty weak excuse…
The problem here is the word "will". Because they don't exist.