Pasting my comment from the other article here - curious to understand the degree to which I'm understanding this.
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The article itself is maddeningly vague on exactly what happened here.
At first blush, it looks like the quantum computer was just used to generate random noise? Which was then checked to see if it was the private key? Surely that can't be.
The github README [0] is quite extensive, and I'm not able to parse the particulars of all the sections myself without more research. One thing that caught my eye: "The key insight is that Shor's post-processing is robust to noise in a way that raw bitstring analysis is not."
"This result sits between the classical noise floor and the theoretical quantum advantage regime. At larger curve sizes where n >> shots, the noise baseline drops below 1% and any successful key recovery becomes strong evidence of quantum computation."
So... is one of the main assertions here simply that quantum noise fed into Shor's algorithm results in requiring meaningfully fewer "shots" (this is the word used in the README) to find the secret?
Someone help me understand all this. Unless I'm missing something big, I'm not sure I'm ready to call this an advancement toward Q-Day in any real-world sense.
The article itself is maddeningly vague on exactly what happened here.
At first blush, it looks like the quantum computer was just used to generate random noise? Which was then checked to see if it was the private key? Surely that can't be.
The github README [0] is quite extensive, and I'm not able to parse the particulars of all the sections myself without more research. One thing that caught my eye: "The key insight is that Shor's post-processing is robust to noise in a way that raw bitstring analysis is not."
"This result sits between the classical noise floor and the theoretical quantum advantage regime. At larger curve sizes where n >> shots, the noise baseline drops below 1% and any successful key recovery becomes strong evidence of quantum computation."
So... is one of the main assertions here simply that quantum noise fed into Shor's algorithm results in requiring meaningfully fewer "shots" (this is the word used in the README) to find the secret?
Someone help me understand all this. Unless I'm missing something big, I'm not sure I'm ready to call this an advancement toward Q-Day in any real-world sense.
Honestly, nobody really has the time to read all the code, research, papers, findings, hence why I use an AI to analyze data, including the article and the github code and research to formulate an unbiased opinion. I'd post the AI's full conclusion here but half the board hackers frown on its usage.
Here's a thought for the moderators, it'd be useful if for any story linked in a post there existed an unbiased, structured and concise, TLDR right below the story as a post, or a function to generate the TLDR, so that people would not have to necessarily link to the story, unless they really needed to.
FYI, the AI's TLDR assessment is that it would not call this a "breakthrough" that definitively puts us on a direct path to Q-Day. That won't happen until a fully functional, large-scale quantum computer capable of consistently breaking Bitcoin’s keys is still needed.
If this is an acquihire, it doesn't compute for me (though I can't say I understand how things work in the world of the 60B level). LLMs are new enough that nobody has a big enough headstart to warrant a 60B personnel change.
The IPO angle also doesn't make sense. Musk cultists were gonna buy anyway; this doesn't change that. And for everyone else, who wants to pay down debt on an acquisition whose effect will almost certainly not be palpable in mainstream circles, if at all?
I don't fully understand the influence that comes with SpaceX subsidies and government contracts, but I gotta believe that rounding up non-lab AI chops are on that agenda?
The exact options - 60B for acquisition (obviously not a cash deal, right?) or 10B for unspecified services rendered... also don't make sense for either of the first two.
Is this just a way of the government securing contractors by proxy that wouldn't pass muster if done through the normal channels?
Of course; that's the only reasonable conclusion from a straightforward reading of the risk profile for children after they age out of drowning and before they age into opioid overdose.
The lion's share of loving a child is intervening in proportion to actual risk.
As a society, that means, more than any other single reform, relieving our cities of the burden of maintaining lethal, taxpayer-funded compatibility with the auto industry's machinery.
I don't think that was the crux of the inquiry / objection. It's wonderful to feel such a bond with one's _community_, but it's a different thing to bind oneself to such a dramatic statistical outlier and make decisions ("dealing with") as if it's a common occurrence.
I mean, I don't know what "decisions" would be made but often people say we are "dealing with" emotions or stress related to something that comes out in the news.
The crux of my stress on this is that riding the light rail is a very common thing for me and millions of my neighbors. In fact we are shocked because we consider it so safe. The LRT should be the safest place in the city, given the cameras, the crowds, the security guards and the vigilant operators.
To think that a vulnerable, female high school student was attacked, broad daylight, onlookers looking, mob of boys (high school I would assume) is just beyond the pale. Nobody did nothing, and the attack continues after she disembarks? It's just unthinkable. There is a Jesuit Catholic boys' school just up the line from where she boarded. Were none of the Brophy boys on hand to step in, to say "stop it" or do anything about it?
And to watch the interview with the mother was just the last straw for me. How upset she is now. Her daughter means the world to her; she couldn't protect her, and she can't "fix this" for her. It's heartwrenching. It should've been safe, especially for a girl like her, so close to adulthood, but legally a child.
I walked up to the flows on Fagradalsfjall when it was erupting a couple of years ago, and I found the cinereous, sulfurous air to be very medicinal and clearing. I'm not sure it'd have good for me for more than a few hours, but as it was, it was great. I occasionally wish I were able to just have a chamber with that air in it.
There are some saunas on Iceland that expose you to earth gasses, might be exactly the kind of chamber you are after. I've visited one, and it was unfortunately cold for a sauna because that's naturally varying too.
> Not everyone in jail got busted for benign stuff like selling a joint. There are lots and lots of incarcerated murderers, rapists, fraudsters, drunk drivers, etc.
In US federal prisons, drug offenders make up over 40% of the total population, by very far the largest group. The next largest tracked category, "Weapons, Explosives, and Arson" is 23%. [0]
Granted, these are almost entirely US federal offenses, which have of course been flux throughout US history with respect to proper authority, and drug offenses have tended to grease the wheels of jurisprudence so as to be regarded constitutional (albeit with a very inconsistent set of underlying principles). Murder for example is not generally a violation of federal law absent (a fairly long list of) special circumstances.
I do not believe there is any state where the number of people incarcerated for fraud convictions is in the same order of magnitude as drug convictions. In Ohio, where this story takes place, drug offenders are about 14% of the population while "fraudsters" are about 1%.
I think it's pretty reasonable to assert that a significant portion of prisons in the USA are convicted of offenses that are not easy to understand as a moral affront to society or an infringement on the rights of anyone else.
The weapons offenses are by a longshot "felon in possession of a firearm." That one is crazy to me. You're going to send people out into the free world, where guns are legal, and owning a gun is legal, and they are supposedly off the books, and then just tempt them with owning something to defend themselves that everyone around them already has but then lock them away for a decade for doing so? Obviously most of the drug ones are just as absurd -- you're locking up drug dealer A who is immediately replaced with drug dealer B with absolutely no change to drug operations or consumption but at great expense to yourself. Thankfully we've pretty much stopped putting drug users in federal prison.
You could probably wipe out over half the federal prisons without any real change to greater society.
Go to your local county jail lockup, by far the most common charge is driving on a suspended license - because many crimes will get your license suspended as a matter of course, and others will give you payment plans and paperwork filing dates and if you aren't on top of everything well enough you will get suspended for missing a payment or failing to submit your stuff properly, then enjoy violating probation with an additional misdemeanor, impound fees, court fees, and possible jail time.
Thank you so much for quitting and putting the long-term needs of humanity over your short-term economic comfort. This is nothing short of a heroic move.
I hope you are able to convince some of your colleagues to do likewise.
...are you suggesting that horses would prefer to endure the conditions under which they built much of the modern world on their backs?
I hate cars way more than I hate AI, but relieving horses of the burden which they carried and the gruesome lives they lived... that's not one of my objections.
If AI can do for humans what cars did for horses (but without the flooding cities with traffic violence part), I'll feel just fine about that.
> I hate cars way more than I hate AI, but relieving horses of the burden which they carried and the gruesome lives they lived... that's not one of my objections.
I’m so glad those horses got a peaceful retirement at the glue factory.
I wonder what they’ll process your corpse into. Soylent green? Or do you think you’re one of the lucky horses that a wealthy owner take care of?
Not sure if you're able to set your snark aside for a moment, but are we really just talking about fewer humans being economically needed? Perhaps biological human population decreasing?
Is that... so bad?
Do you think that horses are upset that there are fewer of them today, and that somehow they'd rather their population increase but bear the industrial age burdens again?
> but are we really just talking about fewer humans being economically needed? Perhaps biological human population decreasing?
Is that... so bad?
Yes, this isn’t a matter of the “well we’ll reach a natural equilibrium overtime”.
If a fair percentage of the people in your society are now no longer economically, needed, they still have upkeep. They still need food. They don’t magically disappear into thin air, and they still need food/shelter /water/etc. How are they to get those things?
Will our leaders, contrary to everything they’ve ever shown us suddenly open their arms and act as mass charity for the masses? They can’t even design an effective welfare program for a pre-AI world.
Will the people displaced simply lie in a ditch somewhere and say “guess it’s time to starve to death”? I suppose Canadian-style suicide-as-service fits my previous Soylent green reference.
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The article itself is maddeningly vague on exactly what happened here.
At first blush, it looks like the quantum computer was just used to generate random noise? Which was then checked to see if it was the private key? Surely that can't be.
The github README [0] is quite extensive, and I'm not able to parse the particulars of all the sections myself without more research. One thing that caught my eye: "The key insight is that Shor's post-processing is robust to noise in a way that raw bitstring analysis is not."
"This result sits between the classical noise floor and the theoretical quantum advantage regime. At larger curve sizes where n >> shots, the noise baseline drops below 1% and any successful key recovery becomes strong evidence of quantum computation."
So... is one of the main assertions here simply that quantum noise fed into Shor's algorithm results in requiring meaningfully fewer "shots" (this is the word used in the README) to find the secret?
Someone help me understand all this. Unless I'm missing something big, I'm not sure I'm ready to call this an advancement toward Q-Day in any real-world sense.
0: https://github.com/GiancarloLelli/quantum
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