<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 4:36 PM, Dylan Distasio </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a href="mailto:interzone@gmail.com" target="_blank">interzone@gmail.com</a>></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Best wishes on staying safe!</blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div><font size="4">Thanks<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>Dylan I'm fine, but the energy of the wind is proportional to the cube of its speed so I now know what Samuel Johnson<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>meant when he said<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>"<i>When a man knows he is to be hanged<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>it concentrates his mind wonderfully</i>". Fortunately the sustained winds<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>of the storm had weakened from 180 mph to 90 mph by the time it hit me, that was bad enough thank you very much but 180 would have been 8 times worse.</font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Curious if John or others have any thoughts on this:<div><br></div><div><a href="https://www.ecnmag.com/news/2017/09/first-chip-nanoscale-optical-quantum-memory-developed" target="_blank">https://www.ecnmag.com/news/<wbr>2017/09/first-chip-nanoscale-<wbr>optical-quantum-memory-<wbr>developed</a></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"><font size="4">Historically optical technology is great at transferring quantum information but not so good at processing it. The big roadblock is the error rate, there are quantum error correcting algorithms that help but those error algorithms are themselves subject to errors so a practical quantum computer big enough to do something useful would need the intrinsic errors to be somewhat less than 1%, this one is 3%. Maybe they can improve it but getting those last few percentage points is hard. <br> <br></font><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font></div><font size="4">On the face of it the Microsoft<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>Majorana fermion<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>approach seems to be behind the others as they haven't even built a demonstration machine yet, but the technology has the potential of making far far fewer intrinsic errors than any of the others<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">,</div> meaning is should be much easier to scale up. If you ever hear that Microsoft has built a topological quantum computer that can factor the number 15 <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">then </div>sell your Bitcoins, hold onto your hat<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">,</div> and get ready for a wild ride.<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>Microsoft's way will turn out to be either impossible or awesome, there is no in-between. Time will tell. <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div></font></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></font></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> John K Clark</div></font><br></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><p></p></div><div> </div></div></div></div>