By request, an overview of quantum computing: https://t.co/uYhhycWAex
tl;dr RSA won't be broken for a long time, but you should probably still switch to post-quantum soon
Experts on NISQ: please let me know of any omissions/errors!
Can you put this in a post for a general tech audience, @sejaques?
So many people think QC is right around the corner, about to break their cryptography.
10 years ago Kelly et al showed bigger rep code circuits do better. The dream was to do the same for a full quantum code.
This year we finally did it. https://t.co/NNe7Za0gkh has d=5 surface codes twice as good as d=3. And d=7 twice as good again, outliving the physical qubits.
Houston, we are below the quantum error correction threshold! 🚀
In “Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold” (https://t.co/sScOACIe7u), we implement a 101-qubit surface code.
Each time we increase the distance by two, the logical error rate is cut in half!
It's actually a reasonable heuristic to expect that chemicals that life had millions of years to adapt to will be safer than totally new ones. Is it always right? Of course not. But it's not ignorant.
Pet peeve: scientists who say "oh you don't like 'chemicals'? Well water is a chemical! Dihydrogen monoxide!"
You know damn well that "chemicals" means "chemicals that never/rarely existed on Earth until humans synthesized them at scale"
Silly idea: university course catalogs should include "alpha" and "beta" for the course: the slope and intercept of a linear regression between grades in that course and a student's overall average
@itranneo@hashbreaker How familiar are you with lattice security generally? Larger q => easier to break the underlying lattice problem(s). If q is exponentially large I think it's totally broken.
Me to a colleague: I think it's fine if students address us informally in email, the new generation has different norms
Me when a student starts an email with "Hi Sammy": the lord is testing me
To those in (a timezone compatible with) Pacific Daylight Time:: I will be speaking at the @Visa Quantum day on 21 May along with Sam Jaques (@sejaques ), Renato Renner, & Brian Coyle (@BrianC2095 ).
Registration is open and free at https://t.co/TtPMaUOD33 (sorry, MS Teams link).
Halfway through the return journey and I have something concrete to say about it: https://t.co/SC0x6h6Qs0
I didn't make it past step 4, but I tried to give some intuition on complex gaussians and Karst waves
(ICYMI others discovered a critical flaw; see the updated eprint)
Kind of amazing that Encrochat was used for basically the exact same thing (though the app was originally not backdoored). I guess criminals really want dedicated apps made just for criminals?
LOL: "Fake messaging app that actually just BCC's all your messages to the FBI" is a real Gordian knot solution to encryption backdoors.
(Though, I worry of the long con: if people think services are already backdoored, it will be easier to pass backdoor legislation)
@bwesterb I'm being a bit facetious. If I had 2000 engineers it would make sense to assign one to work on efficiency of the key exchange. But generally, there are 1,999 other components with just as much performance impact, so focusing on any one needs some justification
0.05% is not a lot, actually
"But at scale that's millions of dollars, and so much energy!"
You know what else costs a lot at that scale? The other 99.95%!