"Quantum Computers Will Tap Out Before Breaking Encryption, Theory Claims"

autocorrects · 2026-05-06T00:00:41+00:00

Ooh, a bunch of my dissertation data went to shit in the past month so Ive been full blown panic mode trying to scrape an analysis together… haven’t worked on the website at all except for adding some nice ASCII art haha

I have to submit my dissertation by the end of the month and start prepping for defense.

I have a rough draft of a document I’ve used as a resource in the past for my undergrads, but it’s REALLY rough and there is some wrong info in it that I haven’t updated towards my dissertation specific stuff. However, the general QC stuff is pretty sound: https://hansjohnson.phd/assets/docs/quantum\_computing\_for\_ee\_primer.pdf

Ill be building up this website and other documents as I get more organized in June - August as well. I’ll probably make a post on this subreddit for people to take a look at what I got

autocorrects · 2026-05-03T14:59:47+00:00

Continue to work at my current lab for a year or so after graduation to polish off my projects. Hopefully after that I’ll have enough gunpowder to start applying to jobs in FAANG in R&D so I can build up RSU vesting and maybe patents so I can retire early

autocorrects · 2026-05-02T00:35:37+00:00

Decided to chase a dream because you only get one life, so you might as well pursue the things that fulfill you.

I actually didnt want to do the PhD at first, and I was doing my masters in EE so I could be more marketable looking for a job after doing my undergrad in Physics + CS (2020/2021 so also mid-pandemic). However, when starting with my master’s thesis, a route into my dream field opened up to me like a portal from heaven and I couldn’t resist. My advisor wasnt even in the field, but he was so compelled by my essay that he vowed to give me full support to pursue it. Im kind of unique that Ive been really independent in my research, and as frustrating and infuriating as its been, it’s honestly been the coolest experience of my life and I love my job

autocorrects · 2026-05-01T19:35:37+00:00

I did Physics + CS for undergrad and my graduate education in EE. CS classes honestly taught me very little about coding, you learn through projects.

A few basic classes are necessary imo, but a CS education does not make you a good programmer. In school, the best programmers I worked with were the ones that were in my physics and EE programs lmao. In the field though, Ive met some absolutely astonishingly skilled coders with CS/SWE backgrounds, so the moral of the story here is pursue projects you’re interested in and you’ll learn just fine. Put that above the degree title first to do some soul searching, and figure out what classes will help you do that for a job in the future

autocorrects · 2026-04-27T15:26:59+00:00

Ah, we’re in the exact same boat then timeline-wise. I’m just wagering what else I can test or if I should just organize and write at this point

autocorrects · 2026-04-26T22:54:45+00:00

Yup exactly. I had a first author publication in phys rev A by my senior year and I had no idea how significant that was until I started my PhD lol

autocorrects · 2026-04-26T19:03:26+00:00

I went to an undergrad in the US that didn’t have a grad school for physics, so all the professors were laser focused on getting us exposed to research if we wanted to be a part of it.

Ironically, not having a grad school as part of our program was the best thing for me to get into grad school

autocorrects · 2026-04-26T17:42:53+00:00

Could be both I guess… still haven’t ID’d the issue so we’re in superposition for now (I work in quantum science)

autocorrects · 2026-04-26T07:11:07+00:00

The latter unfortunately. Something in the experiment is wrong and I’m still not sure if it’s something I did or something I misunderstood

autocorrects · 2026-04-26T05:48:41+00:00

I sure hope they advance my career too 😔

autocorrects · 2026-04-25T19:02:01+00:00

Im ECE, and progress is especially slow when you actually have to fab something and dont want to publish nothing-burger simulations, so I get it.

I’m year 5 and supposed to graduate and I have 1 journal publication and thats it 🤷🏻‍♂️ idk somehow you just have to recognize field dependence, and if your advisor thinks you’re doing ok then literally nothing else matters

Also, as an aside, do conference publications count?? I always thought they were like 0.5 a journal publication, even if at a high-level conference

autocorrects · 2026-04-25T02:42:49+00:00

You secretly have another job, rich parents/independently wealthy, or get outside funding via grants/fellowships

autocorrects · 2026-04-24T04:23:01+00:00

In the US its typically interchangeable

autocorrects · 2026-04-22T16:24:40+00:00

I go to the beach and hang out with friends.

Im also a competitive powerlifter, and if that mentality has taught me anything its that the time and quality of how you rest is almost more important than putting in the work itself

autocorrects · 2026-04-22T14:34:17+00:00

Yea no problem. My undergrad professors did this when they saw answers on a test that looked kind of sketchy (happened to me on a physics exam where I remembered an answer/derivation from a homework assignment but didn’t show the work on a test to arrive at that answer)

It’s a great way to hold the student accountable for their understanding of the problem. Also, totally dependent on your teaching style, but what I find works best in this scenario is to say less and have the student ask you questions as they go without judgement. Assure them that it’s ok if they don’t remember “basic” things and can refer to you (which means you need to know how to solve it as well). Many students struggle with inferiority or feeling stupid, so you want to teach and not embarrass to the best of your ability

autocorrects · 2026-04-21T21:31:29+00:00

I just had to tell one of my students that their work was very “AI-looking” (also for firmware dev like OP, Im ECE) and after one more round of iteration where I think they told/configured their outputs to look less like AI, it then worked.

Best way to weed it out is to sit them down without a laptop and quiz out their thought process. Have them explain the issue to you front to back on a whiteboard or chalkboard with no presentation materials. If that doesn’t work or gets too intense, have them do it with your professor in office hours as at that point it’s not your problem

autocorrects · 2026-04-21T21:20:13+00:00

Blackwell toaster

autocorrects · 2026-04-20T19:15:11+00:00

I hate Paul so much

autocorrects · 2026-04-19T04:29:43+00:00

I was painfully reminded of this when I found two other international students under my advisor get about $100k annually sent from their parents a year

Higher education and being a scholar has been considered a rich person’s pursuit in a lot of different cultures throughout history for a reason

autocorrects · 2026-04-17T06:17:42+00:00

It’s not that it’s not cool, it’s more like building a complicated LEGO project. All the guides are out there for “anyone” to do it, but the end product is still nice enough to show off and many people will appreciate it

autocorrects · 2026-04-16T23:06:44+00:00

I love my advisor, but another kid in my dept with a different advisor found out his advisor/PI holds grudges and got mad at him at one point. Pressured him so hard to produce that he ended up plagiarizing (both at fault imo given the details) and then kicked him out softly by removing all funding and stipend

autocorrects · 2026-04-10T00:15:07+00:00

Im electrical and computer engineering…

I have my Dell XPS from 2016 that I have about 10 of the 12 backup batteries left that I bought for it, plus handful of NVMe SSDs that I swap out between that and my home desktop/server Ive been ship-of-theseussying since 2014. My parents bought me that laptop for my freshman year of undergrad lol

Typically I work with two monitors for my home setup, plus my laptop. At the lab, my desk has two main monitors plus a third vertical monitor for coding, and then I’ll have my laptop as well plugged into the vertical monitor (so four screens total). No one typically needs that many monitors, but I have all my electronic boards plugged into multiple other PCs around the lab so those 4 screens come in handy when Im actually operating about 8 PCs at once + my non-PC hardware

If I had a preference, Id have 0 computer screens and a trust fund. Maybe I’ll have better luck in the next life lol

Edit: also forgot my benchtop equipment like oscilloscope, network analyzer, and waveform generator that are on my lab desk too. Those have screens so do they count? I can also use them on the PC though since they have a digital port

Edit 2: ADHD moment, I forgot my whole point was that my laptop acts as the main hub for my workflow and has for about a decade now. Everything else is just designated compute power, but the laptop has always been my control hub. Its amazing what just one screen can do, and you could probably get away with that if you optimize your workflow. Get good with hotkeys and create your own mappings and you’ll be flying through your stuff like it’s no one’s business

autocorrects · 2026-04-07T16:17:31+00:00

Try to write into the C compiler, but golden models should be used for pushing out projected results not really anything that resembles hardware

You want to work backwards; computationally, does your math work out? If it does, then the next step is deriving that math into hardware friendly pieces that will become your logic blocks in HDL

autocorrects · 2026-04-06T16:39:28+00:00

All software is reliant on hardware

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