5 ms·

Quantom computers are going to be much "slower" in terms of becoming a problem. We just had the public disclosure of Meltdown and Spectre, and I suspect that, w

Quantom computers are going to be much "slower" in terms of becoming a problem. We just had the public disclosure of Meltdown and Spectre, and I suspect that, with what is known publicly, a non trivial amount of CS undergrads would be able to successfully craft an exploit based on this. In contrast, even if we suddenly solved the engineering challanges of building a large quantum computer, it would likely take a while for the economics to work out where a quantum based attack would be economical. For one, for the foreseable future, quantom computers would be expensive (needing high cooling at a minimum), so a 'casual' attacker would need to wait for an economical rental type service to emerge. Also, it would take time to scale up production, so the first bunch of quantum computers will be expensive due to market pressures from big players. In reality, it is likely that quantom computers would see a gradual (even if exponential) rise in power that would give some idea of a timeline for when we have to adapt. Not to mention the research into replacing quatom vulnerable crypto with quantom resistent crypto for over a decade, and has already led to (seemingly) quantom resistent replacements.

macawfish 9y ago
This is an interesting perspective. It reminds me of waking up one day and watching a video of boston dynamics' atlas sticking a backflip. Yes, these things have been in development for decades, but there's something very startling about when you suddenly realize how much they've matured.
- UncleMeat 9y ago
  Only because you aren't an expert and aren't aware of the state of the art in the field. Spookiness has no correlation with actual threat.
  - macawfish 9y ago
    Even for experts, classical and quantum computing both involve very complex engineering. There are inevitably going to be hurdles and growing pains. This moment feels like a growing pain... I'm imagining that the transition to quantum computing will come with growing pains of similar magnitude. It's like when you turn the hot water on and run it over your hand. At first it's cold, gradually it gets warmer and warmer, then there's a moment when you pull your hand out... the water is suddenly too hot, it's crossed a threshold.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > It reminds me of waking up one day and watching a video of boston dynamics' atlas sticking a backflip. Save you some googling in case you wanted to see that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knoOXBLFQ-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knoOXBLFQ-s

macawfish 9y ago

This is an interesting perspective. It reminds me of waking up one day and watching a video of boston dynamics' atlas sticking a backflip. Yes, these things have been in development for decades, but there's something very startling about when you suddenly realize how much they've matured.

UncleMeat 9y ago
Only because you aren't an expert and aren't aware of the state of the art in the field. Spookiness has no correlation with actual threat.
- macawfish 9y ago
  Even for experts, classical and quantum computing both involve very complex engineering. There are inevitably going to be hurdles and growing pains. This moment feels like a growing pain... I'm imagining that the transition to quantum computing will come with growing pains of similar magnitude. It's like when you turn the hot water on and run it over your hand. At first it's cold, gradually it gets warmer and warmer, then there's a moment when you pull your hand out... the water is suddenly too hot, it's crossed a threshold.
jacquesm 9y ago
> It reminds me of waking up one day and watching a video of boston dynamics' atlas sticking a backflip. Save you some googling in case you wanted to see that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knoOXBLFQ-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knoOXBLFQ-s