I take a LOT of Coursera courses. And I LOVE LEARNING so finding interesting Coursera courses and discovering and sharing these hidden gems is one of the perks of the job. There are so many cool courses, but before I joined, I honestly thought Coursera only had a few hundred courses. As of this writing, we have nearly 3,000. However, if you don't know exactly what you're looking for, you might get ...
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Are quantum computers here? This morning, IBM announced their 20-qubit processor is now available, with a 50-qubit prototype (a device, not a simulator) that has been successfully measured and tested and will be available in their next-generation systems. The 5 qubit system was impressive, as was the 16 qubit system. But one of the most impressive things has been the rate at which IBM has progressed. The ability to reliably operate several working quantum ...
Read MoreThe best part of the YCombinator Female Founders Conference this year was how actionable the advice was. I really appreciated Aileen Lee's no-nonsense attitude, where she outlined exactly what points women will be grilled at in venture capital meetings. The overaching message of the conference was: There’s no perfect time to start something, just start Here are my raw notes from the 2017 YCombinator Female Founders Conference YCombinator - Jessica Livingston “Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List ...
Read MoreGoogle, one of the front runners in the race for quantum computing, announced their first experiments with post-quantum cryptography. Why does it matter? If Google is starting to worry about post-quantum cryptography, maybe they had a breakthrough in large scale universal quantum computing? See the original blog post here: https://security.googleblog.com/2016/07/experimenting-with-post-quantum.html Google’s Post-quantum cryptography experiment It’s time to explore options for quantum safe algorithms beyond theoretical implementations. Google has launched “CECPQ1” - a post-quantum key exchange ...
Read MoreQuantum computer factors numbers, could be scaled up The numbers quantum computers have been able to factor so far have NOT been very impressive, but this could all change very quickly. Running Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer is one of the easiest algorithms to run - the key is having enough qubits to do error correction and calculation. By not only running Shor's on qubits, but also making a system ...
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Just as a GPU processes instructions related to graphics exponentially faster than a CPU, certain problems can be solved quadratically or polynomially faster with quantum algorithms, by exploiting the quantum effects of superposition and entanglement. But what is quantum annealing, and how does it differ from a universal gate quantum computer? D-Wave, the most famous quantum annealer, and universal gate quantum computing are not competitors. While they rely on the same concepts, ...
Read MoreA lot of companies are finally giving concrete timelines to the "first" quantum computer. IBM's insights show that the first quantum computer will exist in less than 10 years (2025 estimate). Therefore, applications of all aspects of quantum communication and quantum computing have jumped, with many companies setting up research facilities and thinktanks within industry and academia to explore the applications quantum computing may have upon their industry, like Airbus, below. Additionally, ...
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Quantum mechanics is hard. No one is debating that. But there are a lot of bad facts out there just because the metaphors used were not explained well. Let's debunk myths and explain some misconceptions. “QUANTUM COMPUTERS ARE USEFUL BECAUSE THEY CAN CHECK ALL POSSIBILITIES AT ONCE” No. That’s not how that works. Where did this explanation come from? More than fifty quantum algorithms have been discovered. Each quantum algorithm works differently, but ...
Read MoreQuantum computers could actually have been the trigger to begin the move to post-quantum cryptography. Even though the Snowden files released in 2013 showed limited progress from the NSA on quantum computers, the last 2 years since have been a storm of real, practical results, as well as funding poured into both companies and academic research. One of the comments I most often hear is “Well, Snowden released documents in 2013 ...
Read MoreThe biggest news of the week is the long-anticipated Google quantum computing announcement. The announcement states that the D-Wave machine is more than 10^8 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core. Independent analyses by Dr. Scott Aaronson show that while the results are showing that D-Wave is becoming more mature and probably has quantum effects, the technology suffers the drawbacks of just being built on old quantum computing ...
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