Hacker News: cinquemb

Modern physics is forcing us to rethink existence – Michelle Thaller: Interview [video]

cinquemb — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 01:25:07 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGbZsE7qFgw

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595658

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by cinquemb in "Safeguarding cryptocurrency by disclosing quantum vulnerabilities responsibly"

cinquemb — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:04:23 +0000

Citibank has a good report: https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/storage/public/Citi_In...

Tradfi has way more at risk... and the hardware/software that cant be upgraded that the financial system uses every day...

New comment by cinquemb in "Safeguarding cryptocurrency by disclosing quantum vulnerabilities responsibly"

cinquemb — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 23:53:50 +0000

Pretty much all of quantum control right now is based on the idea that qubits are these fragile things that have to be corrected, but thats because poor assumptions for quantum control are used (SO(3) precession). And even when they are treated like open quantum systems (like everything naturally is, even at 10mK and 10^-11 Torr), stuff like linblad master equations are used which is based on born-markov assumption that the env is a memoryless bath... when one stops using these poor assumptions and treat the system as a dynamical object that has natural states of stability that dont need to be actively corrected... these crypto breaking alarms are going to seem very tame.

This also has implications for alot of PQC and QKD stuff that's based on static model assumptions...

New comment by cinquemb in "Nobel Prize in Physics 2025"

cinquemb — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 07:04:19 +0000

Very exciting.

Devoret was my co-authors phd advisor (and who is also my advisor now on some of my work).

We sorely need more open quantum systems built/designed with open source tooling. The IBM's, Ionq's, Quantinuum's and Googles, will be happy if we all remain serfs to their multimillion dollar machines and hardware direction.

Trapped Ion Quantum Computing: From BEC to Big Industry [video]

cinquemb — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 03:23:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eo_VV0Z4aE

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214338

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by cinquemb in "PyOpticL – Code-to-CAD optical system engineering"

cinquemb — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 03:17:56 +0000

It took me less than a day to start to be productive on my fork [0] for what i wanted to do. The default spacial units are actually microns (but yes they have their[1] examples multiplied by the inch conversion) and the wavelength stuff is in meters. But yes, technically its v0.0.1 so still rough around the edges.

Considering the vast majority of money in the space going into QEC software, I'm so grateful for their work. Was so much easier than trying to everything from scratch with my limited CAD work over the years.

[0] https://i.ibb.co/vCdFC7sp/iso-sep-debugging1.png

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.14957

PyOpticL – Code-to-CAD optical system engineering

cinquemb — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 16:16:17 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/UMassIonTrappers/PyOpticL

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44210582

Points: 23

# Comments: 5

AI models for profitability factor prediction in CSP with dual backup systems

cinquemb — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 05:40:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-87584-6

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43408568

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by cinquemb in "What's Going on at the FBI?"

cinquemb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 22:38:54 +0000

I don't disagree with what you state, but I don't think most who are surprised now are ready to ponder systems of governance and cooperation that require less trust than those most used now so i won't go there here.

New comment by cinquemb in "What's Going on at the FBI?"

cinquemb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 13:08:40 +0000

No matter what happens to any of us personally writing messages here is going to change the situation for those who have ignored the writing on the wall for so long.

People will have hard choices to be made, doubly so for those who have avoided making them. It's great that you seem to now be questioning things you have thought unquestionable; things unfolding now are no surprise to me, and i expect things to get worse, even beyond the current administration or the next until I see people make hard decisions globally.

New comment by cinquemb in "What's Going on at the FBI?"

cinquemb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 12:46:25 +0000

When i see those people start to take actions that they have refused to do so for decades despite the warning signs along the road, I will take those motivations seriously.

Right now, its just a clown show in regards to that.

New comment by cinquemb in "What's Going on at the FBI?"

cinquemb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 12:37:14 +0000

That may be true, and Europeans will be free to trust the Russians and the Turkish as the those in SEA are free to trust the Chinese instead.

If the rest of the world doesn't send munitions on target stateside, Americans wont care. Just like they didn't care for the past 20+ years when DoD was tasked with bombing millions others in far away lands without explicit declaration by congress.

Perhaps those who build their relationships on negotiated reciprocity rather than blind trust will fair better in the coming era.

New comment by cinquemb in "What's Going on at the FBI?"

cinquemb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 12:16:12 +0000

The realpolitik of the situation: you can only really have an alliance among equals and its foolish to believe otherwise with a massive power imbalance (I doubt the cultural boundaries in Europe will aid this endeavor for some kind of unified security umbrella, when unification of the sovereign euro debt markets has remained illusive as represented by the spreads). It's clear that the post wwii era where the US willingly funds everything under the sun ex-stateside without clear equivalent concessions that can be sold politically to the stateside is over for now.

I'm hopeful that it will create a more robust governance systems on the local level in the long run, but not without more short term pain (after all, there were a lot of non-stateside mouths being fed who will have to figure out realistic alternatives and face once unpalatable choices that will need to be made out of necessity).

New comment by cinquemb in "What's Going on at the FBI?"

cinquemb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 08:37:11 +0000

Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...

New comment by cinquemb in "Old Folks See Culture Change"

cinquemb — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 21:38:03 +0000

> You can trace individualism to various started places, like the Protestant Reformation's assertion that individuals have a direct connection to the divine.

Really? I think the Gnostics have long been on that path if one is crediting the Protestant Reformation...

New comment by cinquemb in "Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future"

cinquemb — Sat, 04 Nov 2023 02:46:50 +0000

Adults disagree on many things and are willing to kill each over those disagreements in some cases, even when it comes to what the "truth" is. So color me quite skeptical that any tool that anyone uses is going to be free from such biases unless it's solely in the domain of verifying mathematical correctness in some strictly defined ontological system.

New comment by cinquemb in "Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future"

cinquemb — Sat, 04 Nov 2023 00:39:44 +0000

> Except for the "tools to amplify factual voices"

They felt the need to include it, if they didn't I would agree with what they are trying to do. Why do they need to launder that line item with the rest?

New comment by cinquemb in "Astronauts and Area 51: the Skylab Incident (2006)"

cinquemb — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 07:22:05 +0000

It's ok for people footing the bill in part to want know what exactly they are paying for, even if people may still keep dying? Good to know, I was starting to think people would be surprised...

New comment by cinquemb in "Astronauts and Area 51: the Skylab Incident (2006)"

cinquemb — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 07:00:38 +0000

When people choose to go into that line of work knowing that's the risk they could take on (or outsource to someone else through dubious means), not sure why people have to be sympathetic to that compared to all those who don't go into such line of work and still get killed everyday. But hey, dress it up in a flag and declare it a secret, makes it all better...

New comment by cinquemb in "Superlinear Returns"

cinquemb — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 04:42:59 +0000

I think some people at any given point in time (and some institutions and some governments) do a better job than others at splitting their resources because in part because they have a better framework at recognizing what may reach that critical threshold faster than others based on a given set of conditions (or have lower switching costs when it comes to deciding to not allocate resources to something after a certain point).