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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

The societal impact of quantum computing would be immense -- the entire security infrastructure of the web would have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

However, many experts -- including Scott Aaronson (who is mentioned in the article) -- have cast doubt on D-Wave's claims, because the company has not yet proved that its machines are producing results by exploiting quantum phenomena like particle entanglement and superposition. In other words, D-Wave's devices may very well be different, but still classical, computers. D-Wave's engineers acknowledge as much: they are quoted in the article stating that "they don't yet know for sure what's happening inside the chip."

The fact that Bezos, a very smart guy, has invested in D-Wave, has changed my perception of the company from "these are likely crazy people making outrageous claims" to "maybe these guys are unto something." Exciting and a bit scary. Time will tell.

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I think "don't yet know for sure what's happening" is a bit misleading to the casual reader. If they're actually being honest it's more like: don't know that anything "special" is happening.

Frankly, their devices just aren't quantum computers until they can show they perform quantum mechanically. Until then, they are just hype. Bezos' investment is perfectly rational as an affiliation move -- if he was serious, he'd donate to, say, the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo where real quantum computer development is taking place. But the press releases for their accomplishments get several orders of magnitude less attention, so why bother? (or, is it that you just can't buy in to IBM -- also real work -- or HRL)

Their job ads [1-3] focus is very telling to me; which are mostly for new algorithms people, with long unfilled placements for physicists and materials engineers. The big development in QC this decade has been that "materials matter", and that you can't just throw qubits together willy-nilly. D-Wave scaled their qubit count (see the ridiculous "Rose's Law" slide [4]) basically by ignoring all these problems.

[1-3] http://www.dwavesys.com/en/files/20120627_d-wave_algorithms_... http://www.dwavesys.com/en/files/senior_engineer_2011.pdf http://www.dwavesys.com/uploads/20091026_Design_Engineer.pdf (http://www.dwavesys.com/en/careers.html)

[4] http://www.dwavesys.com/en/dev-tutorial-hardware.html

Just a side note - you're probably conflating Perimeter Institute (www.perimeterinstitute.ca) and Institute for Quantum Computing (http://iqc.uwaterloo.ca/). Both are in Waterloo, but it's the latter that is involved in developing quantum computing implementations.

But the problem (much like a qubit) can go one of two ways. Either D-Wave have built a 512-qubit quantum computer - in which case the CIA / NSA will be strongly suggesting that they don't tell anyone, or they haven't - in which case they won't be telling anyone. The fact that they're not supplying any proof, therefore, contains no useful information.

The largest societal impact of quantum computing would be to solve the 3d structure of biological molecules from sequence data.

This would be produce an almost immediate revolution in all areas of biotechnology whose implications would be difficult to predict.

Bezos may be a very smart guy, but I don't see - short of him becoming an expert in quantum physics - how his investing or not investing in this company means anything with respect to them being onto something.

I don't think the quote

they don't yet know for sure what's happening inside the chip

means what you think it means. I think in context this is an attempt to describe how quantum algorithms work, where they need a nonobserved superposition to operate.

They may well not understand their chips, but that's not supported by that quote in that context. You don't need to know the exact operations involved to solve an optimization problem with quantum computers (or for that matter with classical ones).

"means what you think it means"

Can we find some other way to convey this message without using that same tired old phrase over and over and over again? As soon as I see this phrase by brain automatically shuts down because it tells me the author lacks creativity.

Are people who post to nerd forums really that deficient in English language skills? Or are they just hoplessly compelled to mimic the language used by others?

"means what you think it means" is like some kind of lingusitic meme.

Future posters: Let's be creative and devise another way to state this.

This comment is not personal. It is just a randomexample of a phenomena. Many, many, many nerds use this phrase. I'm just tired of reading it. I can't be the only one. Next time you are tempted to type "doesn't mean what you think it means", please stop yourself. Write it some other way.

The phrase '<> doesn't mean what you think it means' is overused in some contexts, like on reddit and as a quip, but I don't feel that cynicalkane was using it as a quip or joke. He was using it to simply and politely say: 'that doesn't mean what you think it means'.

In short, cynicalkane was not using it in the context you think it was contextualized in.

That's why I said it was not personal. I just randomly chose this one random post in one random thread. There are hundreds to choose from.

Anyway, I'm over it. Maybe using these oft repeated phrases serves some purpose.

Your last sentence made me laugh again. Was that intentional? Are you poking fun at me?

If I took these phrases about what other's are thinking seriously, then everyone in web forums apparently knows what everyone else is thinking. Like they're clairvoyant or something.

I never presume to know what anyone else is thinking. If I want to know, then I ask them.

I suppose you have been downvoted because your post is not really on-topic and also somewhat ranty. But I do share your feeling sometimes although not necessarily with this particular phrase.

For me it's posts that start with:

"This."

The runner up would be the somewhat similar technique of putting a dot between every word of a sentence. That. Is. Quite. Annoying.

But I can't help but wonder why such things annoy us so much? Like you, I get so annoyed with this parrot style of writing that I have a tendency to ignore the post altogether. Why can't I just ignore the form and concentrate on the content of a post? After all, it's a forum, not a creative writing competition.

I've actually tried to better understand what drives people to use the same kind of phrases etc. repeatedly in their posts by deliberately using it myself. Perhaps it is some kind of peer pressure? A feeling of wanting to belong? I couldn't tell, because it didn't do anything for me.

But hey, at least I now got a pretty lengthy post out of this - although there isn't really much content. It's the post about nothing. Jerry Seinfeld would be proud of me.

Really.

I've noticed I do this (use "message templates"), and I suspect it's the result of learning English by reading stuff on the internet. I assume whatever people use the most without being corrected is the right way to use English in informal situations and I try to do the same.

But in my native language I do get irritated by bad style, so I can only sympathize with you. After all - most of the world abuse English :)

It's baffling. Human mimicry I guess. At least I know there are some people reading this stuff who also see it as strange as I do.

>Can we find some other way to convey this message without using that same tired old phrase over and over and over again? As soon as I see this phrase by brain automatically shuts down because it tells me the author lacks creativity.

You keep using this word "creativity". I don't think it means what you think it means.

Not to mention that he didn't want to be "creative", he just wanted to make a specific point. Do you avoid common programming idioms because they've been "done before" or do you just use what is more effective for what you want to build?

>Are people who post to nerd forums really that deficient in English language skills? Or are they just hoplessly compelled to mimic the language used by others?

Or do they merely want to use the colloquiums of their day, their trade and their pop culture? How about that?

>Future posters: Let's be creative and devise another way to state this.

Or let's not. I can understand the intention and the purpose of that phrase in less time than it takes to even read it properly (because I can pattern-recognition the letter shapes it consists off). It's a very common and well understood idiom. It's also kind of fun.

Oh man, I lol'd when you wrote "don't think it means what you think it means". Whether it was intended or not, you have cured my annoyance. I guess a laugh was all that was needed. Thank you! Carry on with the mindless memes.

(I did initially get an upvote for stating the annoyance, so anyone else who is annoyed by this meme, good luck. I feel your pain.)

When I said creative, I meant creative use of language. Yes, memes are extraordinarily popular in forums like Slashdot, Reddit and HN. But I only attribute creativity to the person who created the meme, not the ones who use it incessantly... unless they use it in some creative way, as you did (if indeed you were making a joke).

Idioms. Yes. I take your point. I never looked at memes that way, although I have certainly relied on idioms for learning computer languages.

>When I said creative, I meant creative use of language. Yes, memes are extraordinarily popular in forums like Slashdot, Reddit and HN. But I only attribute creativity to the person who created the meme, not the ones who use it incessantly... unless they use it in some creative way, as you did (if indeed you were making a joke).

Well, I was. I see your pain in a way, I myself have some pet peeves when it comes to language. This particular case I found innocent enough, like using stock phrases like "shit hits the fan" or "out of your league", "to die for", etc.

While I get that part about the person who created the meme being the most creative, meme's get their power and significance from repetition. It's kind of a "network effect", where the more people use the same meme, the more impact it gets in conveying its message. In essence it's like proverb creation, only now we get to track it in real time through the internet.

Beating on the dead horse a little more... (stock phrase :)

The thing that bugs me about "doesn't mean what you think" phrase (in general... forget its use in this thread) is that in my opinion no one can know what someone else is thinking. It's presumptuous to imply that one knows what someone else is thinking. At least, it comes across that way to me. The issue seems to be that things can have multiple definitions. And two people may be operating with different definitions. But unless someone clearly states x means y, then I find it presumptuous for anyone to say to that someone, "I know what your definition is". What they are really doing is taking a guess. In my opinion.

The examples of stock phrases you gave are qualitatively different from something like "doesn't mean what you think it means". I'm not sure how to describe the difference. Maybe they are metaphors? I don't know. But they are different. For one, they don't on their own presume anything about anyone else.

Repetition is fine up to a point. Maybe it's like a song. Even if it's a good song, if you listen to it too many times in a short period of time, it loses something. You may not even want to hear it anymore. Too much of a good thing. Stock phrase #2.

> It's presumptuous to imply that one knows what someone else is thinking.

I agree and sympathize. But incidentally, the original use of that phrase was not so presumptuous. In case you (or anyone reading this) don't know, the original quote is from the movie "The Princess Bride", where one character repeatedly says that some possible event would be "inconceivable" and then that event happens--he also exclaims that some events that have just happened are "Inconceivable!". Another character tells him, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." It's "don't think it means", not "doesn't mean": this contains a proper amount of uncertainty for being a deduction about someone's likely thoughts based on observation of their actions.

And, as a matter of fact, cynicalkane's comment was similar: "I don't think [thing] means what you think it means." Also he didn't include an adaptation of the "You keep using that word" part--I would have found that irritating, being an excessive use of movie references that would make nonsensical writing if the movie didn't exist--but cynicalkane's comment flows naturally, and I consider it a proper use of the phrase. I can only assume that you have seen a bunch of other comments using the presumptuous form (if we want to be grumpy old men, we might say "perversion") of the quote, and cynicalkane's comment was similar enough that you thought of the other comments and decided to complain here. (I haven't actually seen the presumptuous form myself, though I'm willing to believe you've seen it enough to be irritated--and a quick google suggests it does have a large presence. I'd probably be annoyed too.)

> the entire security infrastructure of the web would have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

I don't think so. It would probably suffice to add NTRU support to SSL.

This is the first I've heard of NTRU. Has it been proven immune to quantum computational attacks, or has an efficient attack algorithm just not been found yet?

The former would be world-shaking, so that's probably not the case unless I've been living under a rock. The latter just means that it might be safe, but it might be broken at any time if somebody comes up with the right algorithm. If you're making long-term information infrastructure plans that's something you have to account for.

Yes, but that problem also exists without quantum computers (qc). Advances may break existing crypto, even if proven secure under certain assumptions. This is because the advance may introduce a shortcut that proves the assumptions are unsufficient.

NTRU has been proven safe from known quantum attacks and has been around for some time. There certainly were efforts to attack NTRU using qc.

If it would be included in OpenSSL and NSS, it is likely those efforts would be intensified. I therefore suggest that getting it into those libraries may be the best we can do right now.

See http://www.pqcrypto.org/www.springer.com/cda/content/documen... for more info.

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