
Assistant prof at U Waterloo. Loves maths, maps, algorithms, and flashcards. Aspiring full-stack cryptographer. He/him. @sejaques@ioc.exchange
Waterloo, Canada
Joined November 2014
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By request, an overview of quantum computing: sam-jaques.appspot.com/quant…
tl;dr RSA won't be broken for a long time, but you should probably still switch to post-quantum soon
Experts on NISQ: please let me know of any omissions/errors!
Can you put this in a post for a general tech audience, @sejaques?
So many people think QC is right around the corner, about to break their cryptography.
Wrote up a thread with my thoughts here: bsky.app/profile/sejaques.bs…
10 years ago Kelly et al showed bigger rep code circuits do better. The dream was to do the same for a full quantum code.
This year we finally did it. arxiv.org/abs/2408.13687 has d=5 surface codes twice as good as d=3. And d=7 twice as good again, outliving the physical qubits.
Sam Jaques retweeted
Houston, we are below the quantum error correction threshold! 🚀
In “Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold” (arxiv.org/abs/2408.13687), we implement a 101-qubit surface code.
Each time we increase the distance by two, the logical error rate is cut in half!
Pet peeve: scientists who say "oh you don't like 'chemicals'? Well water is a chemical! Dihydrogen monoxide!"
You know damn well that "chemicals" means "chemicals that never/rarely existed on Earth until humans synthesized them at scale"
Silly idea: university course catalogs should include "alpha" and "beta" for the course: the slope and intercept of a linear regression between grades in that course and a student's overall average
Singapore will make new orchid hybrid varieties and name them after visiting dignitaries. I guess you could call that... soft flower diplomacy 🥁🥁💥
Me to a colleague: I think it's fine if students address us informally in email, the new generation has different norms
Me when a student starts an email with "Hi Sammy": the lord is testing me
Sam Jaques retweeted
To those in (a timezone compatible with) Pacific Daylight Time:: I will be speaking at the @Visa Quantum day on 21 May along with Sam Jaques (@sejaques ), Renato Renner, & Brian Coyle (@BrianC2095 ).
Registration is open and free at teams.microsoft.com/registra… (sorry, MS Teams link).
Halfway through the return journey and I have something concrete to say about it: sam-jaques.appspot.com/stati…
I didn't make it past step 4, but I tried to give some intuition on complex gaussians and Karst waves
(ICYMI others discovered a critical flaw; see the updated eprint)
I'm also asking Qs in this discord: discord.com/invite/xxtwgghE.
So far: step 1 looks legit. Only 8 more to go :)
Writing up my main impressions in an expository note, but one of my questions is here: crypto.stackexchange.com/que…
Kind of amazing that Encrochat was used for basically the exact same thing (though the app was originally not backdoored). I guess criminals really want dedicated apps made just for criminals?
0.05% is not a lot, actually
"But at scale that's millions of dollars, and so much energy!"
You know what else costs a lot at that scale? The other 99.95%!
Wildly impressive result, buuuut... I don't see any 2-qubit gate results?
"A tweezer array with 6100 highly coherent atomic qubits" (Caltech) arxiv.org/abs/2403.12021
Sam Jaques retweeted
This is the most WTF privacy story I've worked on in a while. Discovered while lurking on car forums.
nytimes.com/2024/03/11/techn…
Wish I could pull this move!
In early summer 1936, Albert Einstein and his assistant Nathan Rosen presented a paper to Physical Review, challenging the existence of gravitational waves, something that contradicted the prevailing scientific opinion.
Six weeks later, the journal's editor-in-chief, John Torrence Tate, responded with a critical review asking for Einstein's comments on the reviewer feedback. Einstein was surprised and offended by the notion that his paper underwent external review, leading him to decide against submitting any further papers to Physical Review.
This week’s paper is about the origins of peer-review. Contrary to common belief, peer-review’s story is way shorter and more complex than we assume.
More here: fermatslibrary.com/s/in-refe…




















