At Section "Quantum computing is just matrix multiplication" we saw that making a quantum circuit actually comes down to designing one big unitary matrix.
We have to say though that that was a bit of a lie.
Quantum programmers normally don't just produce those big matrices manually from scratch.
Instead, they use quantum logic gates.
One important area of research and development of quantum computing is the development of benchmarks that allow us to compare different quantum computers to decide which one is more powerful than the other.
Ideally, we would like to be able to have a single number that predicts which computer is more powerful than the other for a wide range of algorithms.
However, much like in CPU benchmarking, this is a very complex problem, since different algorithms might perform differently in different architectures, making it very hard to sum up the architecture's capabilities to a single number as we would like.
The only thing that is directly comparable across computers is how two machines perform for a single algorithm, but we want a single number that is representative of many algorithms.
For example, the number of qubits would be a simple naive choice of such performance predictor number. But it is very imprecise, since other factors are also very important:
- qubit error rate
- coherence time, which determines the maximum circuit depth
- qubit connectivity. Can you only connect to 4 neighbouring qubits in a 2D plane? Or to every other qubit equally as well?
Quantum volume is another less naive attempt at such metric.
Quantization of a real scalar field by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-10 +Created 1970-01-01
This is one of the first examples in most quantum field theory.
It usually does not involve any forces, just the interpretation of what the quantum field is.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv94slY6WqY&list=PLSpklniGdSfSsk7BSZjONcfhRGKNa2uou&index=2 Quantization Of A Free Real Scalar Field by Dietterich Labs (2019)
Founder: Peter Armstrong
The general idea is publishing entire books with usual copyright, but with gradual updates.
ruboss.com/ documents their stack, a somewhat similar choice to OurBigBook.com as of 2021, notably Next.js. But backend in Ruby on Rails. They actually managed Apollo/GraphQL, which Ciro Santilli would have liked, but din't have the patience for.
The founder/CEO Peter Armstrong www.linkedin.com/in/peterburtonarmstrong/ He looks like a nice guy.
The only isotope found on Earth because it occurs as part of the uranium 238 decay chain, i.e., it is not a primordial nuclide.
Interestingly it is a bit less stable than other isotopesL such as Polonium-208 (3 y) and Polonium-209 (124 y), but those aren't in any Earthly radioactive chain so they don't show up on Earth.
Ah, Ciro Santilli was not expecting this. What a unique mixture of humour, technology, politics and bravery. No wonder it was a box flop, there's something good about this film.
Feynman was a huge womanizer during a certain period of his life by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-10 +Created 1970-01-01
Feynman became a terrible womanizer after his first wife Arline Greenbaum died, involving himself with several married women, and leading to at least two abortions according to Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994).
Ciro Santilli likes to think that he is quite liberal and not a strict follower of Christian morals, but this one shocked him slightly even. Feynman could be a God, but he could also be a dick sometimes.
One particular case that stuck to Ciro Santilli's mind, partly because he is Brazilian, is when Feynman was in Brazil, he had a girlfriend called Clotilde that called him "Ricardinho", which means "Little Richard"; -inho is a diminutive suffix in Portuguese, and also indicates affection. At some point he even promised to take her back to the United States, but didn't in the end, and instead came back and married his second wife in marriage that soon failed.
Richard's third and final wife, Gweneth Howarth, seemed a good match for him though. When they started courting, she made it very clear that Feynman should decide if he wanted her or not soon, because she had other options available and being actively tested. Fight fire with fire.
Too many fun skit videos for Ciro Santilli's taste, but does have some serious derivations in quantum electrodynamics.
Publishes through the Fermilab YouTube channel under the playlist "Fermilab - Videos by Don Lincoln"
Some insights, but too much on the popular science side of things.
Why it is hard to make money from this website by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-10 +Created 1970-01-01
There is basically only one scalable business model in education as of the 2020's: helping teenagers pass university entry exams. And nothing else. Everything else is a "waste" of time.
Perhaps there is a little bit of publicity incentive to helping them win knowledge olympiads as well, but it is tiny in comparison, and almost certainly not a scalable investment. This may also depend on whether universities consider anything but exams, which varies by country.
That marked is completely saturated, and Ciro Santilli refuses to participate in it for moral reasons.
Beyond that, there is no scalable investment. Other non-scalable investments that could allow one to make a lifestyle business are:
- extra-curricular initiatives to get younger children interested in science. These may have some money stream coming from the parents of the children. This happens because for young children, the parents are more in control, and the parents, unlike the students, have some money to spend. An example: www.littlehouseofscience.com/The space is also further crowded by several not-for profits.This business model is possible because experiments for young children may be cheap to realize, unlike any experiment that would matter to a teenager or adult.
- creating a private university, for profit or not. Of course, at this point, you would be either:
- competing against the reputation and funding of century old universities
- or be offering more boring, lower tech or techless courses, to (God forbid the phrasing) "worse students", i.e. at a "worse university"
Teenagers and young adults:
- don't have money to give you if you want to "help them learn for real"
- are somewhat forced to obtain their "reputable university" reputation to kickstart their careers
It is this perfect storm that places this specific section of education in such a bad shape that it is today.
This project is likely to fail. It could become the TempleOS of wikis. The project' autism score is quite high. It might be an impossible attempt at a lifestyle business. But Ciro is beyond caring now. It must be done. Other things that come to mind:
- www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLibNZv5Zd0dzvoxXrjA9xNHLpdgLhTkZz "Obsessed" playlist by Wired. Helps Ciro feel better about himself.
- Don Quixote
- pipe dream
- Video "Don't Try - The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski by Pursuit of Wonder (2019)"
Dangerous combination:and for any crazy person who might wish to join: Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey.
One man with a laptop and a dream.
If enough people use it, we could let people sell knowledge content through us.
Teachers have the incentive of making open source to get more students.
Students pay when they want help to learn something.
We take a cut of the transactions.
However this goes a bit against our "open content" ideal.
Forced sponsorware would be a possibility.
Would be a bit like Fiverr. Hmmm, maybe this is not a good thing ;-)
- you don't get any/sufficient recognition for your contributions. The closest they have to upvotes and reputation is the incredibly obscure "thank" feature which is only visible to the receiver itself: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Notifications/Thanks
- deletionism is a tremendous problem on Wikipedia, for two main causes:The stuff you wrote can be deleted anytime by some random admin/opposing editor, examples at: Section "Deletionism on Wikipedia".
- tutorial-like subjectivity
- notability
This also possibly leads to Edit wars in the case of sub-page content (full page deletion is more clearly arbitrated). - Scope too limited, and politics defined. Everything has to sound encyclopedic and be notable enough. This basically excludes completely good tutorials.
- Insane impossible to use markup language-base talk pages instead of issue trackers?! Ridiculous!!! That change alone could make Wikipedia so much more amazing. Wikipedia could become a Stack Exchange killer by doing that alone + some basic reputation system. Some work on that is being done at: www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DiscussionTools, already in Beta as of 2022.
- Edit wars
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