Comment by AndrewStephens
8 hours ago
Aaronson know his stuff but I am not sure he hasn’t considered the fact that, in this current hype cycle, the quantum researchers breathlessly reporting to him on a breakthrough just around the corner are just lying to him and themselves.
I have been hearing about one more technical hurdle to solve before quantum algorithms become feasible since before I graduated. That was in 1996.
This is true, practical quantum computing is always "just a couple of years away".
At the same time, moving to more secure encryption really isn't difficult. How many times have algorithms been deprecated over the past 20 or so years? It's time to do it again.
Let's just make sure that the NSA hasn't worked in any backdoors. At latest since Snowdon, anything they work on is suspect.
There is no clear evidence that the risk of "a practical post quantum computer would arrive in the next 5 years" is greater than "post quantum scheme X is broken" for any scheme X. The only way to go is hybridation and it is quite hard from an engineering point apparently.
There is evidence of the opposite: graph singular isogeny mumbo jumbo algorithm was proven to be easily broken on an ordinary computer.
Hybrid encryption is as simple as running one encryption and then the other. Problem is mostly that post quantum keys are large.
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I hard disagree with your assertion that moving to more secure encryption isn't difficult. It is insanely difficult, especially at global scale.
It'll be a 90/10 rule: 90% of the upgrades will be straightforward. It's important the 10% that'll be hard early. For many it's probably already too late.
And in the process immediately convert huge numbers of devices into ewaste. Then check the excuse calendar again for tomorrow's reason to deprecate yet another batch of "legacy" ciphers from openSSL.
The sooner we start making devices ready for better encryption systems, the fewer devices will be wasted.
Are you saying this because it's an evergreen joke or because you really think there hasn't been meaningful progress in the field since 1996?
Duke Nukem Forever was release fifteen years ago. Some things never happen until they suddenly do.
The wolf really does eat the boy at the end of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
But Duke Nukem was developed with visible progress.
We are still not factoring 21, let alone 35, let alone numbers with thousands of digits.
Quantum correction algorithms (that would allow factoring of thousands of digits) begin to work when the gate fidelity and other parameters are above certain threshold.
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The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a story about a boy who have seen a wolf, successfully threatened the wolf away by causing a commotion in a disbelieving village. One day the disbelieving village refused to show up, boy was eaten and thus proven correct.
But as it happens in real life politics too, people who were just proven they were wrong continued to blame the boy.
The story is told from the point of view of a villagers trying to hide their culpability by blaming the victim.
That's one way to completely reframe the story to fit the narrative you want to push
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> The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a story about a boy who have seen a wolf, successfully threatened the wolf away by causing a commotion in a disbelieving village
What happened before that in the story
quantum computers will flourish the same day that fusion does.