• k_o_t
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    3 years ago

    can we pls stop using the word “supremacy” when comparing performance? like

    swaziland reaffirms its carrot supremacy after growing most carrots per country

    🤷‍♀️

  • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
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    3 years ago

    The “Scientist Study” website is not run by anyone, it seems. They don’t have an “about us” page and their WHOIS record points to “Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1244960640” in Toronto, ON, CA.

    Here’s a link to the original paper “Strong quantum computational advantage using a superconducting quantum processor” (Wu et al., 2021), according to Google Scholar cited 12 times.

    Scott Aaronson went into a little more detail on his blog, which sheds a bit more light on what this update of their earlier papers means:

    the Chinese group seeks to render the debate largely moot with a new and better Gaussian BosonSampling experiment, with 144 modes and up to 113 detected photons. They say they were able to measure k-photon correlations for k up to about 19, which if true would constitute a serious obstacle to the classical simulation strategies that people discussed for the previous experiment.

    If this experiment can be replicated, it’s a pretty good step in the right direction of actual quantum supremacy. I don’t think we’re even half way to quantum supremacy, yet.

  • Zerush
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    3 years ago

    Well, they are temporary advantages of the Chinese, since this race has only just begun. Today many large corporations have projects of this type, apart from Google and IBM, Facebook also has, NASA and some others. They are even launching the first Quantum PC for only $ 5,000, although of course still quite limited to 2 Qbits, but this technology is definitely here to stay and that the user has to look for alternative methods to passwords, which are soon no longer useful. https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/a-desktop-quantum-computer-for-just-usd5-000

    • pinknoise
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      3 years ago

      the user has to look for alternative methods to passwords

      Why? Quantum computers only really break “conventional” asymmetric encryption and there are mature “quantum safe” alternatives.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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      3 years ago

      Given that China already graduates around twice the number of STEM people as US, I fully expect the gap is only going to widen going forward. China also has coordinated state driven tech research strategy as opposed to ad hoc efforts by different companies. China already has a functioning quantum netwrok in production, there’s nothing even close to that in the west right now.

      • Zerush
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        3 years ago

        I know, but the technology is still in its infancy, similar to the first PCs in the last century, where there were also big differences with Apple in the head, although today there are no big differences, regardless of the manufacturer or country, with more or less standardized values, depending on what you want to pay for this. I imagine that, although the Chinese are currently leaders, once this technology is developed, few differences will exist. The only thing that worries me is that it is precisely the large companies and totalitarian governments that are going to have this technology and not the user, in an internet with already losing privacy. What possibilities will a user with a miserable laptop have to protect himself against Big Brother surveillance with a Quantum Computer?

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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          3 years ago

          We already live in a world of pervasive surveillance now, I don’t think quantum communication could make the situation worse in that regard. I do agree that it will likely be too expensive for regular people to use, so privacy will likely only be available to governments, corporations, and billionaires.

          • Zerush
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            3 years ago

            I agree that there are currently endless dirty tricks by large corporations to track user activities, but there are also good countermeasures available to at least alleviate it to a great extent. But this with Quantum Computers will no longer be possible, for this the technologies that a user can have and those of large corporations is too disparate, with which the protections that a normal PC can include are equivalent to trying to avoid with duct tape the collapse of a building. Encryptions where a powerful computer would need thousands of years to reveal it, in a Quantum computer it is possible in a few minutes, it is too great a technological leap. This is only possible to alleviate, if the user also has a Quantum PC, which will be the case in the future, but in the meantime it is to be practically naked in front of these companies.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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              3 years ago

              There are encryption algorithms that account for quantum computing. However, quantum network transmissions is a separate technology for quantum computing. What China developed is a way to create quantum encrypted communication channels that can’t be eavesdropped on. I don’t think anyone has working quantum computers yet.

              • Zerush
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                3 years ago

                Quantum communication can’t be intecepted or desencrypted, not even by other Quantum computer, it’s physically impossible due it’s nature, but every encrypted file or communication by a normal PC can be desencrypted easily by a Quantum computer, that is the problem for the user. PD, IBM offers courses in Quantum computing online for free, giving free cloud access to their Quantum computer https://quantum-computing.ibm.com