alt Hacker NewsAre these actually even useful yet? Genuine question. I never managed to solicit and answer, only long explanations which seemed to have an answer of yes and no at the same time depending on who you observe.
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They can fundamentally break most asymmetric encryption, which is a good thing iff you want to do things that require forging signatures. Things like jailbreaks Apple can't patch, decryption tools that can break all E2E encryption, being able to easily steal your neighbor's Facebook login at the coffee shop...
Come to think of it, maybe we shouldn't invent quantum computers[0].
[0] Yes, even with the upside of permanently jailbreakable iPhones.
yes, they are useful... as marketing materials. Other than that, not at all.
Sounds exactly like a quantum state itself!
It is frustrating to try to unpick the hype and filter the “will never work” from the “eureka!”
No
Useful exclusively for generating random numbers, just like every other "quantum computer" (at least the ones publicly announced).
Each "quantum" announcement will make it sound like they have accomplished massive scientific leaps but in reality absolutely no "quantum computer" today can do anything other than generating random numbers (but they are forced to make those announcements to justify their continued funding).
I usually get downvoted when making this statement (of fact) but please know that I don't hate these researches or their work and generally hope their developments turn into a real thing at some point (just like I hope fusion eventually turns into a real / net positive thing).
Only if you use them in conjunction with an HTML5 supercomputer. (Sorry, I couldn't resist with Nikola in the news again)
No.
The long explanations boil down to this: quantum computers (so far) are better (given a million qubits) than classical computers at (problems that are in disguise) simulating quantum computers.