Jen Roberts

Founder & Curator @goldenslippers7. Freelance writer. PhD researcher: trade disruption at the dawn of the Viking Age. Climbing convert.

[Carl Bovis @CarlBovisNature]

This is what entitlement looks like! 🤬
There are nesting waterbirds on this pond on Hampstead Heath... there are also big 'No Swimming' signs, all being totally ignored! 🤬
Pure selfishness... 😒🤬🤬

(Shared from Instagr*m with permission from 'swansofhampsteadheath')

[Jen Roberts @JenRoberts]

@BBCBreaking Oh god. Unbearable.

[Jen Roberts @JenRoberts]

Delighted about this. And it's so true, Cat would live in a hut with you... @cspencer1508

[Charles Spencer @cspencer1508]

Many months ago a close friend said: “The thing about Cat is, she’d live with you in a hut.” Little did I know that she’d also be happy to marry me in a desert …🌵
Most photography: Caitlyn Jennings

[Paul Bronks @SlenderSherbet]

Trying to explain to your wife how you went out for a beer with your friends on Saturday night and came home on Sunday afternoon.

[Jen Roberts @JenRoberts]

@MerrynSW I especially enjoy all the people on the tube watching videos and Facetiming using their speakerphone.

[threetimedaddy @threetimedaddy]

If you think you’ve had a bad day, my 9 year old came home from school with a trumpet.

[Johannes M. Koenraadt @johannesmkx]

This is my video that recently went viral. I cover the euthanasia situation in the Netherlands. For people under 30, it mostly targets autistic people (75%) and women (74%).

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

The birds were trained to play dead when shot, but the last one gave an amazing performance. 😂😂

[Jen Roberts @JenRoberts]

Fond memories…@RedRosesRugby @KTTunstall

[Sophie H @sophhemming]

Thank you @GoldenSlippers7 & @JenRoberts for inviting @EnglandRugby World Champs to a very special set with the fantastic @KTTunstall #wow

[Justin Drake @drakefjustin]

Today is a monumentous day for quantum computing and cryptography. Two breakthrough papers just landed (links in next tweet). Both papers improve Shor's algorithm, infamous for cracking RSA and elliptic curve cryptography. The two results compound, optimising separate layers of the quantum stack. The results are shocking. I expect a narrative shift and a further R&D boost toward post-quantum cryptography.

The first paper is by Google Quantum AI. They tackle the (logical) Shor algorithm, tailoring it to crack Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures. The algorithm runs on ~1K logical qubits for the 256-bit elliptic curve secp256k1. Due to the low circuit depth, a fast superconducting computer would recover private keys in minutes. I'm grateful to have joined as a late paper co-author, in large part for the chance to interact with experts and the alpha gleaned from internal discussions.

The second paper is by a stealthy startup called Oratomic, with ex-Google and prominent Caltech faculty. Their starting point is Google's improvements to the logical quantum circuit. They then apply improvements at the physical layer, with tricks specific to neutral atom quantum computers. The result estimates that 26,000 atomic qubits are sufficient to break 256-bit elliptic curve signatures. This would be roughly a 40x improvement in physical qubit count over previous state-of-the-art. On the flip side, a single Shor run would take ~10 days due to the relatively slow speed of neutral atoms.

Below are my key takeaways. As a disclaimer, I am not a quantum expert. Time is needed for the results to be properly vetted. Based on my interactions with the team, I have faith the Google Quantum AI results are conservative. The Oratomic paper is much harder for me to assess, especially because of the use of more exotic qLDPC codes. I will take it with a grain of salt until the dust settles.

→ q-day: My confidence in q-day by 2032 has shot up significantly. IMO there's at least a 10% chance that by 2032 a quantum computer recovers a secp256k1 ECDSA private key from an exposed public key. While a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer (CRQC) before 2030 still feels unlikely, now is undoubtedly the time to start preparing.
→ censorship: The Google paper uses a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof to demonstrate the algorithm's existence without leaking actual optimisations. From now on, assume state-of-the-art algorithms will be censored. There may be self-censorship for moral or commercial reasons, or because of government pressure. A blackout in academic publications would be a tell-tale sign.
→ cracking time: A superconducting quantum computer, the type Google is building, could crack keys in minutes. This is because the optimised quantum circuit is just 100M Toffoli gates, which is surprisingly shallow. (Toffoli gates are hard because they require production of so-called "magic states".) Toffoli gates would consume ~10 microseconds on a superconducting platform, totalling ~1,000 sec of Shor runtime.
→ latency optimisations: Two latency optimisations bring key cracking time to single-digit minutes. The first parallelises computation across quantum devices. The second involves feeding the pubkey to the quantum computer mid-flight, after a generic setup phase.
→ fast- and slow-clock: At first approximation there are two families of quantum computers. The fast-clock flavour, which includes superconducting and photonic architectures, runs at roughly 100 kHz. The slow-clock flavour, which includes trapped ion and neutral atom architectures, runs roughly 1,000x slower (~100 Hz, or ~1 week to crack a single key).
→ qubit count: The size-optimised variant of the algorithm runs on 1,200 logical qubits. On a superconducting computer with surface code error correction that's roughly 500K physical qubits, a 400:1 physical-to-logical ratio. The surface code is conservative, assuming only four-way nearest-neighbour grid connectivity. It was demonstrated last year by Google on a real quantum computer.
→ future gains: Low-hanging fruit is still being picked, with at least one of the Google optimisations resulting from a surprisingly simple observation. Interestingly, AI was not (yet!) tasked to find optimisations. This was also the first time authors such as Craig Gidney attacked elliptic curves (as opposed to RSA). Shor logical qubit count could plausibly go under 1K soonish.
→ error correction: The physical-to-logical ratio for superconducting computers could go under 100:1. For superconducting computers that would be mean ~100K physical qubits for a CRQC, two orders of magnitude away from state of the art. Neutral atoms quantum computers are amenable to error correcting codes other than the surface code. While much slower to run, they can bring down the physical to logical qubit ratio closer to 10:1.
→ Bitcoin PoW: Commercially-viable Bitcoin PoW via Grover's algorithm is not happening any time soon. We're talking decades, possibly centuries away. This observation should help focus the discussion on ECDSA and Schnorr. (Side note: as unofficial Bitcoin security researcher, I still believe Bitcoin PoW is cooked due to the dwindling security budget.)
→ team quality: The folks at Google Quantum AI are the real deal. Craig Gidney (@CraigGidney) is arguably the world's top quantum circuit optimisooor. Just last year he squeezed 10x out of Shor for RSA, bringing the physical qubit count down from 10M to 1M. Special thanks to the Google team for patiently answering all my newb questions with detailed, fact-based answers. I was expecting some hype, but found none.

[Sky News @SkyNews]

BREAKING: A price cap will be placed on pet prescriptions, the Competition and Markets Authority has announced

Pet owners will pay a maximum of £21 for their first prescription and £12.50 for any other medicines

🔗 Read more
https://t.co/mu5CJCZAHa

[Isabella M Weber @IsabellaMWeber]

The world energy shock is coming — it will deepen inequality in ways we've seen before. Our new @newstatesman piece argues that without urgent government action, the Strait of Hormuz crisis will ripple through our economies and rip apart our societies. Here's why. 1/

[Jen Roberts @JenRoberts]

Beautiful

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC.

May God bless America.

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Yes it's absolutely true - the human race survived hundreds of thousands of years without vaccines.

Most people didn't reach 40 and half the babies never saw their first birthdays but hey, those were the days, right?

[The Curious Tales @thecurioustales]

🚨 JUST IN: A migratory bird just shattered world records — flying 8,425 miles (13,560 km) NON-STOP across the Pacific without landing once.

The bar-tailed godwit doesn’t stop to eat, drink, or sleep during its migration across the Pacific Ocean. Its journey from Alaska to Australia takes roughly 11 days of continuous flight, covering over 13,000 kilometers through storms, headwinds, and open ocean with zero land beneath it the entire time.

Before departure, it does something almost surgical to its own body. It shrinks its digestive organs down to almost nothing, converting the stomach, intestines, and liver into raw fuel. The bird essentially eats its own gut to make room for fat reserves that will power its wings for nearly two weeks straight.

The brain doesn’t fully sleep either. Half of it stays active while the other half rests, alternating in shifts mid-flight at altitude over the open Pacific. The godwit is simultaneously unconscious and navigating with magnetic field sensitivity that no human instrument in the 18th century could replicate.

What makes this genuinely staggering beyond the physical record is the navigational precision involved. The bird leaves Alaska and arrives in New Zealand with accuracy that would embarrass early GPS systems. It reads Earth’s magnetic field, atmospheric pressure gradients, star positions, and potentially quantum-level compass mechanisms inside its eye that literally let it see magnetic field lines overlaid on its visual field.

Evolution spent millions of years building an aerospace navigation system inside a 300 gram animal.

We spend billions engineering machines that do what this bird does on instinct, fat reserves, and half a sleeping brain.
The longest recorded non-stop flight by a commercial aircraft is around 20 hours.

This bird does 11 days.

Without a runway.

[Peter Frankopan @peterfrankopan]

Most eyes are on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. It's also worth paying attention to waters off Sri Lanka, 4,000 km away 1/4

[Jen Roberts @JenRoberts]

A beautiful light this morning. #London

[ROSALÍA UPDATE @updaterosalia]

🚨 ROSALÍA and Björk performing “BERGHAIN” at the #BRITs Awards 2026.

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Israel hacked a popular Iranian prayer app to send notifications to potentially millions of phones Saturday morning urging the country’s military personnel to defect from the regime and join a fight to liberate the country. https://t.co/osIRvGSmrz