Farewell, 2024; we hardly knew ye. It seems like only a year ago it was still 2023, and now, in a few days, it’ll already be 2025. The good news is that 2025, in relation to 2024, is one year closer to 2030 — the arbitrary year when we will be able to reflect upon 2024’s roadmaps and find out who delivered hardware and who delivered hype.
IQT NORDICS 2025 (MAY 20-22) ANNOUNCES THREE ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS
Ebba Carbonnier of Karolinska Institutet and Swelife, Pontus de Laval of the Wallenberg Fund and Oscar Drez of the European Commission will be joining with 40 additional speakers at IQT Nordics. Additional information for registering or sponsoring can be found at www.iqtevent.com.
Zapata AI Job Seekers
If you were laid off by Zapata AI and would like a free listing in this newsletter, please reach out and let me know. I’ll maintain a list in The Quantum Dragon until everyone on the list has been gainfully employed elsewhere or is otherwise no longer actively job seeking. I might extend this offer to all job seekers, but I’ll start with these layoffs.
- Shawn Gibford Industrial PHDc: Quantum Applications in the Life Sciences
- Dr. Francesco Benfenati Quantum Solutions Engineer
- Dr. Yanbing Zhou, Quantum Application Scientist
Refuting Quantum Supremacy 2
In last week’s edition, I linked to Prof. Tom Wong’s spreadsheet on Twitter. This week, there is a similar tweet from Prof. Ryan LaRose, however, there is also a link to “A brief history of quantum vs classical computational advantage” on arXiv, if you don’t have and/or don’t want to have a Twitter account.
Starfleet Codes
You’ve probably heard of surface codes, LDPC codes, and other quantum error correction (QEC) codes, but we need Dr. James Wootton to experiment with surface codes that have iSWAP circuits just so he can write something up and formally add a few specific Star Trek references to arXiv.
Baby, it’s cold outside.
With all the hubbub about “quantum energy advantage” and the potential environmental benefits of quantum computing, Bluefors is the first company I’m aware of promoting the recycling of the heat generated from cryogenics. Qubits like to be cold, but humans? Not so much.
How YOU doin’?
Thanks to Dr. Stefan Seegerer for sharing LinkedIn Unwrapped by Cleve.ai. It scans your public LinkedIn posts and then provides a fascinating PDF report on your 2024 activity. Enough of it is predictable that the rest of it seems plausible. For example: I’m not funny; that one’s spot on.
- I posted lightly Saturdays through Mondays, moderately Tuesdays through Thursdays, and heavily on Fridays due to the publication schedules of Inside Quantum Technology articles and The Quantum Dragon newsletters.
- I was apparently amongst the top 0.0010% of LinkedIn users globally.
- 86.5% of the reactions to my posts were “Like;” only 3% were “Funny.”
- My top three posts were:
- Gold: Alice & Bob’s roadmap
- Silver: “I like to MOVE it, MOVE it” article about IQM Deneb
- Bronze: the story behind “the least qualified person in quantum”
- My “LinkedIn Buddies” were, alphabetically:
- Prof. Michael Biercuk
- Bernadino Buenaobra
- Dr. Sandra Kay Helsel
- Hilary Kaye
- Alex Khan
- Anthony Lawrence
- David Ryan
- Bill Wisotsky
- My content persona was “the thought leader;” my analytical yet relatable approach apparently invited critical thinking and discussion, challenging perspectives in quantum computing while engaging my audience with personal insights.
- I had lulls in activity from midnight to 8 am local time (I knew that already).
Holy slit!
Download the files so that you can 3D print your very own physical model of double slit wave interactions.
Quantum Technology Workforce Monitoring Report
I somehow didn’t know that QED-C publishes this report, so I’m sharing it in case it’s news to you, too. It would be nice to have an analysis of why the numbers are the way they are, but I don’t know whether they do or don’t occasionally do that. I subscribed so that my next comment about it will hopefully be less uninformative.
Are you teaching quantum computing?
If yes, and at the university level, Prof. Mehmet Aydeniz is conducting a survey about your experiences. It should take 10-15 minutes, and your responses will be kept confidential. The stated goal is to help improve teaching strategies. This link might require a LinkedIn account. This link does not.
Our quantum sensors will be smaller than a coffee bean.
A Coffee Bean For Scale
Mesa Quantum is developing atomic clocks that are low-cost, lightweight, energy efficient, reliable, reproducible, and “the world’s smallest.” That’s all fine and dandy, but using a coffee bean for scale in an image is what earns a flight on The Quantum Dragon. This link might require a LinkedIn account. This link does not.
Animate good times, come on!
I was about to share one of QuTech’s animations, when I noticed the post included a link to a page with all five of its animations:
- From Alice to Charlie – the next step for the quantum internet
- What is a quantum internet?
- Untappable quantum cryptography becomes practical with MDI-QKD
- A Multinode Quantum Network explained
- The Quantum Inspire Journey
Prof. John Preskill uses Overleaf.
He’s actually bemoaning its compilation speed in this tweet, but nonetheless indicating that he uses it. This link might require a Twitter account.
Finding Ed Jaynes’s ghost
On Twitter, Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern characterizes an article as “a bit like Ghost Busters 2, except with quantum-physics lectures instead of action scenes.” Although her article about that article does not require a Twitter account, her comment about the article might.
Dancing with Dr. Bob Sutor
Enjoy some “easy listening” this holiday season as Dr. Bob Sutor and I play a game I invented called “trigger word association” on The Quantum Dragon Podcast. Not “word association,” but “trigger word association.” We also talked about caffeine, coffee, his books, and his newsletter, but hey, we played a game too!
May every one of your atoms sparkle this holiday season
Infleqtion wishes you a happy holiday season by positioning individual atoms. This link might require a LinkedIn account.
Quantum Noise Detector
Alan Ho and Prof. Michael Biercuk inspired the Resuscitated Quantum Bullshit Detector, but the original(?) has resurfaced on Bluesky. It’s back to reposting a simple “bullshit” or “not bullshit,” so The Quantum Dragon will continue to monitor for challenges, controversies, and debates under this new name from Dr. Bob Sutor.