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warren_stupidity t1_j2i0a3a wrote

Things I learned: governments have archives of encrypted communications that they will decrypt as soon as they have a viable QC up to the task. It’s sort of the encryption apocalypse.

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fenton7 t1_j2i53oi wrote

The largest prime number ever factored by a real quantum computer using Shor's algorithm was 21 back in 2012 so don't hold your breath. In 2019 an attempt was made to factor the number 35 using Shor's algorithm on an IBM Q System One, but the algorithm failed because of accumulating errors. It's tech that sounds great in science fiction but actually building a working quantum computer with enough qbits and low enough noise to do anything useful may be an impossible engineering problem.

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warren_stupidity t1_j2iermh wrote

right - it might be in the 'fusion reactor' mode of breakthroughs that never actually pan out into something functional. Or not.

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