43 Comments
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Brettbaker's avatar

Northern Europeans, the quantum supremacy of technological development.

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aoxy87's avatar

"Martinis" is obviously not Northern European.

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JMcG's avatar

Congratulations to these gentlemen. Now, among the very many subjects of which I’m ignorant, quantum computing has a secure place. However, I follow Scott Locklin’s blog and he recently posted what he calls the best quantum computing paper of 2025.

The paper is named “Replication of Quantum Factorization Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog.” That paper claims that, thus far, quantum computers have proven incapable of factoring even a two-digit number; 15 is used as an example.

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BnK's avatar

Sounds like three angry liberal ladies with their panties in a wad, had nothing better to do one day than to make a scene for absolutely no rational reason!

A vast majority of Americans are so over this asinine “DEI Hill” these liberals want to die on! Get a life gurls… there’s way more important things to worry about than your butt hurt phraseology of Supremacy!

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Almost Missouri's avatar

There are more important things.

Unfortunately, the liberals can't do any of them.

So they're going to go back to wadding their panties and making a scene. It's their only hill to die on.

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BnK's avatar

Amen!

Every day they wake up victims and every night they go to bed victims! What a miserable life they must live!

No thanks…

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Ralph L's avatar

Did the billions spent on accelerators, etc., actually produce anything useful to humanity (not just scientists and contractors)? Maybe it takes decades to figure out what's prizeworthy (and replicable) and what isn't.

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micheal's avatar

Nothing. The attempts to make abstract mathematics models tangible have kept their cartel flush with cash but provided no proof that any part of "physics" during the last 100 years even exists at all. I think it is a fairy tale and the future they promised will never arrive. But they will live happily ever after with our money and broken dreams.

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PE Bird's avatar

CERN uses on average 1.2 terawatt-hours of power annually, so there's that.

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Bob Thebuilder's avatar

Quantum experiments tend to be smaller and cheaper though. CERN is more a tool of particle physics for breaking matter into its smallest possible components.

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Sam Atman's avatar

The World Wide Web is the first thing that comes to mind.

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Erik's avatar

The history of science and math shows there is often a big delay between knowledge and useful application to humanity. Besides that, there is this concept that if society doesn't try difficult things in science and technology, if we say where we are is so good we should just hold steady here, we will regress.

It was a theme of "Interstellar"

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Bob Thebuilder's avatar

Geopositioning satellites would be impossible without an understanding of quantum mechanics, so there's that.

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Matthew Kelly's avatar

Is this Sabine Hossenfelder's sock account?

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Guest007's avatar

Medical accelerators, advanced non-destructive testing, positron emitter production, advanced detectors, advanced signal processing.

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Richard Bicker's avatar

Woke's got work to do. Think small.

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Boulevardier's avatar

As with the post about feminists the other day, one of the glaring contradictions of the woke mindset is that small and oppressed subsets of society are as good as - nay, better - than any pale, stale male but are easily crushed by language they don't like.

As many others have noted, progressivism and its instincts about how society should be ordered are extremely feminine, and the centering of this mode of thought/conflict resolution across the West has been both an unprecedented experiment in ordering society and a total disaster. I believe Nicholas Wade has a new book out that touches on this, debating whether to pick it up or wait for the iSteve review.

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Bob Thebuilder's avatar

Ciration, please.

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Ralph L's avatar

I wonder how much the woke movement was driven by academicians searching for new angles on old material, who then infected their students. Publish or perish.

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Boulevardier's avatar

It seems pretty obvious that a lot of woke academia is an outlet for not particularly bright people, put out there by universities that have drastically lowered the quality of students, instructors, and degree offerings to keep the coffers full and to brag about diversity. No actual scholarship is required, just the dim understanding that the entire game is to identify a disparity in society, accuse the winners as the source of the loser's problems, and recommend redistribution of power and resources.

This sort of resentment-based ethos that centers around trying to lower other people's social standing seems a lot more like a female intrasexual competition tactic than what most men would do.

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Pitchworks VC Studio Group's avatar

Awesome thanks for sharing

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Fleecer's avatar

Too funny. 'denounced the term “quantum supremacy” as terrifying Physicists of Color by reminding them of “white supremacy:” Okay, 'terrifying'? Yes, capitalize physicists of color. Why? Simply by bringing this up in this manner is terrifying in an of itself. Blacks do not own words. Time to grow up and resume being a scientist.

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Bob Thebuilder's avatar

I just pray that James Dewey Watson can live long enough to see the nattering nabobs of negativism rehabilitate him within his lifetime.

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Matthew Kelly's avatar

Reminds me of when "master/slave drives" had to change names in old PCs because it was triggering or something. I've seen a similar thing where the "master" branch in Git repos is now "main" because...white fragility invisible knapsack of microaggression privileges or something, I'm told.

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Ralph L's avatar

Master bedrooms became primary bedrooms, but Master Lock is still in business. I've been a stockholder since 1984 via American Brands, so I really should complain at the next meeting.

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Fleecer's avatar

Also the 'male', 'female' threads on a screw. One goes in and the other takes it, essentially. And it's all about screwing. Funny when you think about it. How graphic is that. Used to be so common, haven't heard it from contractors for years.

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ScarletNumber's avatar

O/T

The UCLA Bruins football team pulled the upset of the season by defeating the 7th-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions 42-37 on Saturday despite being a 25-point underdog. There was serious talk that UCLA might go winless this season so after starting 0-4 they fired their coach, DEI alumnus DeShaun Foster.

The funny part was after the game when some of the 38,300 on hand stormed the field in celebration, which the security guards didn't appreciate as UCLA does not own the Rose Bowl. One security guard in particular made an ass out of himself by not only being grossly out of shape but also harassing a pre-teen girl and her father

https://x.com/CFBInsightsByAI/status/1974715605770289538

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Guest007's avatar

I am waiting for Steve to notice that Bill Belichick did not really have some secret formula for identifying the talent of white football players but that Tom Brady could make possession receivers look great.

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questing vole's avatar

One of my favorite groups from the '60s was called The Supremes, and they were a darker shade than pale. Do you think that the trio of shrewish scientists get the willies when they hear Diana sing? Does it remind them of Simon Legree?

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Erik's avatar

Supreme not supremacist. Obviously you don't grok how magic words work.

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questing vole's avatar

That's certainly true, and I didn't even mention Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Does that make him a Love Supremacist, though?

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Erik's avatar

The one that pissed me off is they removed "plantation" from the official full name of the state of Rhode Island and ruined one of my favorite bits of trivia to make people walk away from me at a cocktail party.

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Bob Thebuilder's avatar

LOL, the niggling nanominds' complaint to Nature followed by Preskill's starchy response adds fresh meeting to the term "white supremacy," i.e. white westerners have achieved heights of Discovery, invention and organization that no other race could even possibly approach.

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Yancey Ward's avatar

Perhaps Nature can make up for this by identifying and lauding the black transgendered housekeeper from whom these men stole the ideas.

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michael mitchell's avatar

"terrifying Physicists of Color" All three.

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air dog's avatar

Physicists of Color should litigate this outrage. All the way to the Advantageous Court.

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questing vole's avatar

Those women are some crazy PHOCers.

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Paul Reichardt's avatar

Here’s a good paper on the work from the 1980’s, moderately accessible to someone with 2-semesters of undergraduate physics.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.239.4843.992

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