The title of this post changed as I was reading it. "It looks like the 'JVG algorithm' only wins on tiny numbers" is a charitable description. The article is Scott Aaronson lambasting the paper and shaming its authors as intellectual hooligans.
It's inaccurate to say it wins on small numbers because on small numbers you would use classical computers. By the time you get to numbers that take more than a minute to factor classically, and start dreaming of quantum computers, you're well beyond the size where you could tractably do the proposed state preparation.
To be clear, I think that slide deck will be looked back upon as naive. In particular, it makes the classic mistake of assuming the size of number factored should be growing smoothly. That's naive because 15 is such a huge cost outlier and because quantum error correction has frontloaded costs. See [1] and [2] for details.
[1]: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/01/06/has-quantum-advantag...
[2]: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/01/25/has-quantum-advantag...
[3]: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/02/28/what-is-next-in-quan...