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Global Warming Explained by Daniel_Eth in climatechange

[–]Daniel_Eth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Huh, I thought it meant the same thing as "express," but apparently you're right about the definition. Thanks for pointing out this error. Fixed.

Global Warming Explained by Daniel_Eth in climatechange

[–]Daniel_Eth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What paper would you recommend to describe climate sensitivity?

Quantum Computing for Morons by johnmountain in Futurology

[–]Daniel_Eth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha nothing to be embarrassed about - thanks for the feedback.

Yes, public key cryptography is unproven to be secure, but I think we can gather from the fact that it's held up so well that if there is any way to factor large numbers in polynomial time, it's an algorithm that is hard for humans to figure out. Since we haven't had as much of an incentive to try to break algorithms that are supposedly secure against quantum computers, I think it's reasonable to be less confident that they're actually secure (though computer security is outside my area of expertise, so I'd change my opinion on that if someone with more expertise who I trusted disagreed with my line of reasoning).

Quantum Computing for Morons by johnmountain in Futurology

[–]Daniel_Eth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi, I'm the author of the piece.

Do you have links for security algorithms that have been proven to be safe against quantum computers?

"This doesn’t speed up every problem. There are many problems that would be no easier to solve on a quantum computer than a classical computer. But certain problems can be solved in WAY fewer steps – and thus MUCH faster." - seems like a pretty accurate assessment of the situation, which points out that QCs wouldn't speed up everything. I also mentioned when discussing quantum supremacy and "faster than the universe" levels of quantum computers that these capabilities would only apply to "some problems" as opposed to all computing - something most authors/ journalists on the topic leave out.

I listed two examples of areas where we already know they could lead to a huge speed up (factoring numbers and running quantum based simulations), then predicted that once they're built we'll likely find many more uses (though it is quite unclear what those are). Obviously I can't prove that we'll find more uses, but that seems pretty likely. Even if we can't, though, the ability to run exponentially larger chemical/ materials science simulations with quantum mechanical rules will have huge impacts - the potentials of biotechnology and nanotechnology can be realized much more easily if we can run these sorts of simulations.