Re: [PLUG] Quantum computing talk Thursday night at Princeton ACM

[Michael Lazin via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

I attended, and it was a high-level overview of quantum computing in
general. It introduced ideas I found strange and contradictory, so I
spent some time with Gemini after the meeting unpacking the concepts
presented, as a lot of it was new to me.

I did ask two questions. First, I let them know I think quantum
encryption is the key to uncrackable security because copying or
looking at a quantum encryption key changes the state of a qubit,
making it impossible to know its previous state. I predicted that
quantum encryption would first appear in the cloud, and they generally
agreed with me. Second, I mentioned that there were some articles
about chemical computers in Scientific American in the '90s and asked
why that technology failed while quantum computing succeeded.



Michael Lazin

.. τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.

On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 10:34 AM Walt Mankowski via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> I needed to run some errands after work and totally forgot all about
> this until this morning. Did anyone attend?
>
> Walt
>
> On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 05:20:06PM -0400, Michael Lazin via plug wrote:
> > I will try to attend this because I am interested in the idea of quantum
> > cryptography.  I am more interested in the creation and protection of
> > quantum cryptographic keys because the qubit provides a physics level
> > approach to protecting an encryption key because if you view or copy the
> > key the state of the qubit changes and you cannot know what state the qubit
> > was in before it was modified.  Please excuse me if this explanation is too
> > simple.
> >
> >
> > Michael Lazin
> >
> > .. τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.
> >
> > On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 5:01 PM Walt Mankowski via plug <
> > plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > Tomorrow night Terry Bollinger will be giving a talk on quantum
> > > computing at the Princeton ACM. Here's a brief synopsis:
> > >
> > > ===
> > >
> > > A Deep-Physical Look at Quantum Computing
> > >
> > > The talk begins with a description of how David-Deutsch-style quantum
> > > computing was supposed to undermine all prime-number cryptography
> > > methods by using only 15 qubits. Not 15 thousand or 15 million: 15
> > > qubits. What happened after that, and why usable quantum computing
> > > continues to stump the world decades later, is the topic of this talk.
> > >
> > > ===
> > >
> > > The meeting is online and starts at 8 PM EDT tomorrow night, May
> > > 21. For more information go to
> > >
> > > https://princetonacm.acm.org/meetings/mtg2605.pdf
> > >
> > > Walt
> > > ___________________________________________________________________________
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