I rarely feel as stupid as when reading anything about quantum computing. The whole field could just be a giant in-joke where none of it exists and they're all just spouting nonsense technical jargon to confound the plebs, and I'd be oblivious.
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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There's a good 3blue1brown video that walks through the actual math they can perform, which does a lot to temper expectations about what they can accomplish and how much of an improvement they would be over digital computers for certain types of problems.
Here's the YouTube link, or search for "But What Is Quantum Computing? (Grover's Algorithm)" on your preferred front-end: https://youtu.be/RQWpF2Gb-gU
Is it real, or is it a giant financial marketing bubble waiting for its moment to consume the world economy? Let's watch what happens with the AI bubble to find out.
I don't think quantum computing is a bubble at all, at least not yet. It's still firmly in the stage of being explored and understood in a healthy way. I could see it having the possibility of being a bubble, but it would take significant advances in making it more available.
That's exactly where LLMs/"AI" were about 10 years ago. My point is that after the AI bubble pops, the same idiot techbros have probably already identified new things to latch onto and pump up into a bubble, they're probably already seeding the ground with it. I can almost guarantee quantum computing will be one of their next "disruptors" that they disrupt ignorant investor's bank accounts with.
AI is just the currently active grift of these con artists. The grift goes on, and on, and on, it never stops. Quantum computing will have its day. It's not there yet, but someday it will be.
If you can make a bubble out of crypto and sub-prime mortgages, quantum computing is a doddle, though I'd bet it comes after compute as a service using all those datacentres (some of which will even get built).
Problem is the AI burst is very likely to take out the US economy (and do bad things to the rest of the world), the home of these scams. But I'm sure some shareholder value was 'created'.
All shall perish in service to the one true God, the Almighty Dollar
Quantum computing is trying to be ai, in the sense that it does have niche scientific uses it excels at but tech bro types want it to be the next general computer so they can make their empire on it. The only use case I've seen it excel at so far is generating precisely tailored probability distributions, which end up mostly being useful for simulating different models for quantum field theory. Even then I've only seen that in looped fiber implementations, which imo are a stretch on the definition of quantum computer.
I mean, AI is what took the focus away from QC, especially after AlphaFold. Quantum Computing is potentially a society changing technology, now regarding practice we are really far away. The main expectations are in the field of medicine. I work in that field and I reckon that if the expectations placed on quantum computers were to come true, we'd be able to study the human body much quicker than now and to develop drugs much quicker than now. However, I do work nearby a Quantum computing centre and I have met quite a few persons who work in the field, both as researchers and entrepreneurs. Currently no computer can be used to make any real calculations and it is actually unclear if the molecular simulations are actually possible with a quantum computer. As far as I understand it, it may not be possible to encode the whole system in a quantum computer before it loses coherence. This may be an intrinsic limitation as for real problems you'd need to encode tens of thousands of electrons.
If it's good at probability distributions it probably can be incorporated into finance via Black Scholes or something similar.
Every time I see a picture of a quantum computer, it just looks like a bunch of Galileo thermometers bundled together. So maybe you're on to something lol
Come off it. Next you'll be saying that https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.ca/c/vxjunkies are just making it up.
That's giving a 404. Kobold might be on to something.
I think you are thinking of recycling.
The linked paper, “Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog” is also a great breakdown of how much the quantum factoring is more of a parlor trick and not practical for factoring RSA Keys, mainly since the prime factors are only a few bits off of each other and from the square root of the number being factored.
We hypothesise that the production of fully entangled sheep is easy, given how hard it can be to disentangle their coats in the first place. The logistics of assembling the tens of thousands of sheep necessary to factorise RSA-2048 numbers is left as an open problem
Omg, I simply cannot! Thanks for brightening my day with this paper XD
a well trained dog outperforms current quantum-made calculations 👍🥳
Seriously recommend this. I saw it a while back and found it highly informative.
The talk is on YT... Id link but at work atm
It's Ford's Quantum Computer, it will factor any number you want, as long as it's 15.
Quantum Computers are bullshit.
For years, quantum computers are only good for doing quantum computing benchmarks. They promise to solve everything, but I'd bet that we get both power from fusion (cold or hot) and have a concious AI decades before a quantum computer solves significant real-world problems.
No serious quantum computer scientist or industry person would claim QC "solves everything". Who is "they"?
This "everything" was meant as an exaggeration. But it comes close for nearly every article (or press release disguised as an article) in the press.
QC has well-founded expected applications within chemistry, factorisation and optimization. Anything else is hyperbole at this point.
Tell this to the people who try to sell it as the one big computational solution.
I am! Tell me who it is, and I'll kick their butts.