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Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
81–90 of 118 posts
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#82This 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…?
I would love to use reading mode in my browser if this site supported it. As I noted.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#83I 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…
Thank you for posting/sharing.
My mid-sized US city (Chattanooga) has recently announced a partnership with Vanderbilt and EPB (local govt-owned fiber ISP) which creates a Quantum Computing Research Facility [$,$$$,$$$,$$$] [1].
As locals are covering this news, I keep having this thought that nobody (perhaps less than a few?) even knows what those words mean (certainly not me). You speak confidently and clearly enough that I'm incline to believe it's kind of real.
So thanks for sharing your P[0]V with this dumbass (former data center) electrician (me). All the "Quantum"-phrasing represents to me is more local job opportunities.
>>@3m27s: "Quantum computing is basically trying to treat some isolated piece of the universe to behave slightly less randomly, for a very brief timeframe, so that it is useful to you when you try to solve some problem."
>>@20m: [simple flow-chart of interacting with Quantum Processing Unit]
>>@final.words: [paraphrasing] "Right now you buy a quantum computer simply to research quantum computers. Ours is $14MM"
>>@final.meme: https://i.imgur.com/WKaN3mL.png> [2]
>>Q&A further listening recommendation: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/05/13/275-...>
>>"If you learn the examples on https://quantum.country> you will be among top 1% of QC newhires."
[0] that quantum computing is "kind of real", which is how it always feels when being-described
[1] https://www.vanderbilt.edu/chancellor/initiatives-and-outrea...>
[2] explain yourself (you really think you can include this slide in your presentation and then not talk about its implication(s)?!)
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got some too. Obviously the principles behind quantum computing are perfectly sound. It's just those pesky engineering obstacles. One of the companies around today or in the near future will be the one who makes it work at a practical scale. It will have enormous impact, but I think it will be a slow-burn kind of thing as making effective use of quantum computers will take a long time to evolve, IMHO. Unfortunately…
You might benefit from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_fund
Like 95% of my investing money ends up going to fairly-low-risk ETFs like VOO or VTI, not too different than from an index fund.
Still, that last five percent is more or less my gambling money. I put it into individual stocks with the hope they get huge. Sometimes it works out well, like when I bought $700 of Nvidia in 2022. Sometimes it goes badly, like when I bought a bunch of Sears stock with the hope they'd bounce back.
I think I'm still technically "up" with my gambling money, though it's in the budget of "stuff I'd be ok going to zero".
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#85This 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.
iPhone user here I have a button that I can adjust the text size on this site.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#86Earlier 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.
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 wal…
In Bitcoin's case, public keys are only revealed during a transaction.
And every transaction completely spends the source keypairs' funds.
So the only attack vector a quantum computer could use is:
1. Observing newly broadcast/unconfirmed transactions
2. Deriving the private key(s) from the public key(s)
3. Creating and broadcasting its own transaction using the stolen keypairs before the original transaction confirms (presumably with a higher fee to win the confirmation race).
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
EDIT: correction: every transaction completely spends any selected UTXO of an associated keypair, not all of the "source keypairs' funds". Thus the attack vector also includes being able to steal from any keypair that has ever made a transaction and also has UTXOs.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#87I 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…
At this point my bet is that the breakthrough isn't going to be qbits per chip, it's going to be entanglements-per-second in quantum networking. If you could string together simpler processors in a cluster at anything approaching interesting scales then all of a sudden the orders of magnitude become a lot less constrained and it's just a money problem.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#88One 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.
If your bank’s encryption is broken in the future, then, to recover, you will need to change your password, and that’s all. Bitcoin does not have that luxury.
Also, your bank can switch to securing TLS with post-quantum key exchange algorithms with little difficulty and with no particular scalability or re-architecting challenges.
As for “256-bit”, the best known quantum attack against symmetric ciphers is Grover’s algorithm, and Grover’s algorithm will never break a targeted 256-bit symmetric key in the lifetime of the universe even if run by a hypothetical alien civilization with a Dyson sphere. (It might plausibly break one of many targeted keys in a multi-key attack run by advanced aliens, but this won’t steal your money and it could be easily mitigated by moving to 384 or 512 bits.)
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
24-hour latency to make a payment? What is this, the 20th century?
This is for rescue, not for payment. Once you've moved the coins to quantum-secure wallet, the delay would no longer be needed. ...probably some people would be very inconvenienced by this. But not as inconvenienced as having the coins stolen or declared forever inaccessible.
> ...probably some people would be very inconvenienced by this. But not as inconvenienced as having the coins stolen or declared forever inaccessible.
I don't know why anyone f's around with crypto anymore. So many caveats, such a scammy ecosystem. It just doesn't seem worth the trouble to support a ransomware and money laundering tool.
Re: Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The banking sector can relatively trivially move to a new encryption scheme - this is one of the huge advantages of centralized systems. Also, the banking sector, rather than trying to provide anonymity/pseudonimity, has KYC - they can relatively simply disable remote access if they think a current system is no longer secure, and get everyone to come in to a physical office and get a secure version, after manually ve…
> they can relatively simply disable remote access if they think a current system is no longer secure, and get everyone to come in to a physical office After all these years of it not being required? I think that's... very naive with regard to how clients would respond.
I'm not saying it would be pretty, but it would still be infinitely better than what migtn happen in Bitcoin land - where people will either be able to steal money from those wallets directly, or the owners will permanently lose access.