back to article 'I give fusion power a higher chance of succeeding than quantum computing' says the R in the RSA crypto-algorithm

As they do every year, the names behind the RSA crypto-system took the stage in San Francisco for the RSA Conference's crypto panel, sharing their thoughts on the pressing issues facing the information security world. Ron Rivest (the R in RSA), Adi Shamir (the S), and Whit Diffie (of Diffie–Hellman key exchange fame) were …

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      1. holmegm

        Re: Voting Machines

        The Electoral College was explicitly *designed* to somewhat dilute the power of big population centers, and it does that just fine. It's working as designed. Some of the states wouldn't have joined the union without it (nor without the two Senators per state design of the Senate).

        Just because the "right" (i.e. Left) people didn't like the outcome this last time doesn't change that.

        Ironically, it was the losers who were floating a plan to manipulate the College. When that failed, they decided that they hated it again.

        1. Gareth Pye

          Re: Voting Machines

          The EC was for two reasons:

          Dilute the power of big population centers.

          Be a check against an unqualified president.

          The former is of questionable value (the senate does that very well, and the reforms I'd propose for that would not eliminate that while making it much more representative: it should be multi seat electorates with a preference system of voting) and the later is apparent to not work.

          Things that absolutely have to change for the US to be a democracy would be removing the many months of lame duck governments (there really is zero reason for these to exist, and the emergency things that do need immediate decisions can be done and require a vote once the new government sits) and centralization of election administration so there can be confidence in the election process.

    1. Sgt_Oddball
      Holmes

      Also turns out...

      Even if (stop sniggering at the back) the software is flawless and the hardware solid.... Cosmic rays can still bugger things up with a nice bit flip in the wrong place at the right time (in fairness any and all voting machines should be using full ECC memory but what do I know) as I was listening to this morning available here from the Radiolabs broadcast which did have me wondering why anything which has any large scale implications (death, destruction, being voted in) should have as a matter of course but doesn't. I mean it's not like ECC is that horrifically expensive that it's not worth the extra outlay to be safe surely?

  1. MJB7
    Pint

    "Since every other government in the world makes these decisions in 3-5 days,"

    This seems like Priti Patel's cue to say "hold my beer"...

    1. Tom 7

      Re: "Since every other government in the world makes these decisions in 3-5 days,"

      Can you actually drink beer when you have a permanent leer on your face?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Since every other government in the world makes these decisions in 3-5 days,"

      Priti Patel wouldn't drink beer, it's for the plebs.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Earlier I said some nasty things about the people in charge of the visa process. I would like to ask for this to be forgotten."

    It's annoying when somebody touting himself as an expert gives his supposedly informed opinion, then shows he doesn't really understand the issue, or doesn't care, as long as he wants to spout a funny-but-wrong witticism.

    The right to be forgotten is not, and has never been an absolute right applying to every and all things one did or said. Of the 50000 requests Google receives, as quoted, they turn down plenty, as the law allows. About half of them, if memory serves.

  3. steelpillow Silver badge

    Forgotten what?

    If people cannot get jobs because they have a criminal record, I am not sure how enforceable or fair a right to be forgotten would be in the long term. Is it really the best way to move society forwards? If I were voting for my MP or someone, I would expect their criminal record to be publicly available. Security services also need to vet candidates for such things. It is more applicable to some jobs than others. We don't fight other forms of discrimination by forgetting race, gender or age. Perhaps employers should be obliged in law to demonstrate that any refusal for a normal job was on other grounds - and then monitored/sanctioned for not fulfilling their quota of old lags.

    1. Robert Grant

      Re: Forgotten what?

      Public jobs such as MP are treated differently, as do services that have been designated as requiring specific knowledge (e.g. convicted paedophiles working with children). That doesn't mean every job needs that information.

    2. fuzzie

      Re: Forgotten what?

      The whole point is that the right is not a blanket "I don't like this. Take it off the internet". The problem is that, search engines specifically, are not clever enough. They aren't nuanced enough to construct and proper and accurate time line to realise that the very newsworthy arrest you experienced ten years ago was followed by the case being thrown out or never prosecuted.

      Many jurisdictions also have convictions expire after a time, once the fin has been paid or time served. The "right to be forgotten" doesn't mean all this magically disappears from history, it just means that search engines have to be much more careful about what they present in search results and, additionally, have to conform to local custom, law and (cultural) standards/expectations, e.g. do you consider the legal/justice system to be punitive or reformative? The answer to that will often determine which side of the fence you're sitting on the right to be forgotten.

      1. steelpillow Silver badge

        Re: Forgotten what?

        Maybe we need both, then: limited rights to be forgotten, plus sanctions on those who discriminate. I'd hate to live in a world where de-anonymising my conviction could perfectly legally lose me a job (assuming I had one >cough<).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Forgotten what?

          "I'd hate to live in a world where de-anonymising my conviction could perfectly legally lose me a job (assuming I had one >cough<)."

          -- which one, a job or a conviction?

          1. steelpillow Silver badge

            Re: Forgotten what?

            Precisely.

        2. eldakka
          Facepalm

          Re: Forgotten what?

          plus sanctions on those who discriminate
          That's worked well for defeating racism, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, the gender pay gap, from the workplace.

          Oh wait, it hasn't.

    3. Imhotep

      Re: Forgotten what?

      I believe that an applicant's criminal record should be available.

      The Wall Street Journal had an article recently on a company that had a factory in Chigago with a work force that was 80% ex-cons. The conversations with the company's officers and the employees on what it takes to make that work were fascinating. It does require a lot more investment of time and effort to help these employees succeed in what may be a first for them: a steady job with a paycheck, having to be at work on time, managing finances and paying bills - a complete change in the way you live. But it works - these people are turning their lives around.

      There are people out there doing God's work.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: Forgotten what?

        "It does require a lot more investment of time and effort to help these employees succeed in what may be a first for them..."

        And then you get the ones who take all your investment and stab you in the back. Worst part is, it's hard to tell the two apart, and for some business, one backstab can break you as much as one missed day of production. And with so many potential employees available, you wonder why many employers wax cautious...

        1. steelpillow Silver badge
          FAIL

          Re: Forgotten what?

          Funny that, the backstabbers where I worked were always the middle managers with clean criminal records.

      2. HelpfulJohn

        Re: Forgotten what?

        "There are people out there doing God's work."

        Well .......... *someone* has to.

        1. Charles 9

          Re: Forgotten what?

          Why can't God do His own work if he's so On High and Almighty and All-Powerful?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Teleport Heat = no quantum computers

    Well, given that 2019 research paper, where MIT (?) discovered they could teleport heat, you can see why Quantum Computing will only ever be a modern version of an analogue computer. Consider the 'heat teleportation" discovery from last year and consider what you're looking at in that system and why it could never work.

    Take two neutral particles e.g. N1 and N2. N1 and N2 are *not* passing heat to one another, no teleportation of heat.

    1) There are no real neutral particles by observation. Neutrons are not neutral, splay them out and they're formed from balanced charges. The smallest possible thing must be light, to be an electro-magnetic wave across space, light must have a splay of charges across space. So it too must be a balance of charges, not a single neutral entity. Since every neutral particle can ultimately be converted to photons, they must also be a balance of charges.

    2) N1 and N2 are in motion, detect their position at t1, detect it again at t2 and its in a different place. IT'S MOVED ergo its in motion!

    3) Since they are charged, there must be a force between them and that force must be electric in nature.

    4) In order for that force not to move N2 with respect to N1, both N1 and N2 must be moving the same. So that motion 2) must be resonant electric. A sort of synchronized dance.

    5) OK, so we have N1 and N2 particles doing a synchronized dance. But N2 does not move with respect to N1, so the N2 dance must end up at the same place with respect to N1. In other words we have a dance over an electric field that overall goes nowhere.

    6) If they were not in resonance then a force would apply from one to the other as it moves and so you would be passing energy aka heat.

    So quantum entanglement, the fact that motion effects correlate (whether that motion is up down oscillation, or angle of oscillation or spin or some more complex oscillatory motion), is simply because everything is doing that! The reason atomic clocks oscillate the same is not magic, its because they're doing this resonant dance. They're not going through every possible state till detected, they really are moving.

    So you're quantum computer isn't in all states till it locks to the best state and it will find sub-optimal solutions for which better solutions exist. The proof is obviously to find better solution using current techniques and then prove that the quantum computer isn't going through all possible states, because it didn't go through the optimal one. I believe this has already been proven several times.

    Likewise the spin-off quantum encryption is worthless. It's just filtering by that 'successful entanglement' signal, the same flaw in all entanglement experiments.

    ----

    Look, there's lot of obvious things in that 2019 experiment staring you in the face:

    Mass for example, you have a motion that returns to the same place after some time in some repeating pattern. i.e. a form of energy that is not in motion.... that's mass. And given the only thing there is electric in nature, it must be a motion over an oscillating electric field. That "stationary electric energy" must be mass because otherwise what is it!

    If N1 and N2 were not in resonance then a force would be applied between them, and they wouldn't return to the same place, N2 would return to a different place with respect to N1, and N1 a different place with respect to N2. i.e. That component of the motion you call momentum is the same motion as mass. It's just whether it returns to the same place or not with respect to the observer!

    The faster it moves, the less mass it has and the more momentum it has, up to the limit case where it is all momentum and no mass... that's light/photons, whatever you want to call that limit case.

    And if you push N2 at resonance with N1 at resonance, then you have something to push against. The further N2 is out of resonance with respect to N1, the less of a component you have to push against and the harder it is for N1 to push N2. You wonder why it gets harder and harder to accelerate things, the faster they go, in a magnetic field? It's because that F/2 component becomes skewed more and more with respect to your accelerator coils!

    And since electrons also do the resonance dance of 2), because they too keep moving when you measure their position, then any electric field you've made with electrons has been an oscillating field at resonance. You've never experimented with electric force, only an oscillating version of it at local resonance!

    Electric force itself (the non-oscillating kind) must propagate infinitely fast, since all paths through space must be in resonance, the force must take zero time to propagate. And that makes sense of course, because the same force must bind those charges in photons that must occur from 1), and since photons travel at the speed of light, the force binding them couldn't propagate at the speed of light, it would be impossible.

    And mass is all relative. A photon N2 has ~0 mass with respect to detector N1, but from the point of view of the photon, N1 has ~0 mass. From the photons point of view N1 is all skewed out across motion and has no mass. All of N1's energy is in its momentum! And ~0 of it in mass. At least from the point of view of the N2 light.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Teleport Heat = no quantum computers

      Is this more of the usual Electric Universe bollocks or have you invented something new all of your own? Either way, you were right to post anonymously.

    2. southen bastard
      Devil

      Re: Teleport Heat = no quantum computers

      AH Amanfrommars, you'er back, how is the family?

      lost your log in I see, good luck finding it.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Teleport Heat = no quantum computers

        The post you replied to is not amfM. amfM is usually mostly lucid.

        1. Tom 7

          Re: Teleport Heat = no quantum computers

          The right words just not necessarily in the right order?

  5. herman

    The right to be forgotten/change your name

    In the days of the Wild Wild West, one could 'do a crime and serve your time' and that was it. You pretty much were, whoever you said you were. Nowadays, everything is recorded and any sentence is a life sentence.

    The only thing people can do nowadays to finish with the 'doin yer time' part, is to change their name and move to another country immediately after leaving jail.

  6. vtcodger Silver badge

    Lovely quote

    "Blockchain is the wrong security technology for voting, I like to think of its as bringing a combination lock to a kitchen fire,"

    What a marvelous quote.

    The problem with blockchain is that it's a nifty technology that doesn't seem to be a really good answer to any known problem.

    1. Carpet Deal 'em

      Re: Lovely quote

      Blockchain does solve the problem of how you have umpteen thousand actors trust a ledger in a zero-trust environment(ie, cryptocurrency), but for anything that doesn't closely resemble that it's at best a suboptimal solution.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Lovely quote

        "Blockchain" is just a particular form of Merkle graph, and Merkle graphs have other applications - in distributed filesystems, for example. Of course voting in public elections isn't one of them.

    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      I think

      the canonical form is "If you think blockchain is the answer you're asking the wrong question".

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: I think

        "If you think blockchain is the answer, you haven't used enough XML and regular expressions. Also maybe some machine learning would help?"

  7. vtcodger Silver badge

    Different problems

    Allow me to point out that using quantum technology to crack encryption is an entirely different class of problem than fusion power. Cracking encryption -- especially for encrypted material you already have -- only requires your cracking technology to work when everything is just right. It can fail dismally most of the time and still be extremely useful on the rare occasions when it works. Fusion on the other hand would appear to need to work VERY reliably in order for it to be useful for anything other than rapid urban renewal.

  8. Nifty Silver badge

    Who was it that said the world will only ever need 1 quantum computer?

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      We need either zero or one quantum computer, but we don't know which yet.

  9. John Savard

    Que sera, sera

    Recently, there have been some very positive announcements about fusion power. And a lot of major corporations take quantum computing seriously enough to invest in it.

    This, however, is not to say that Ron Rivest is wrong. Fusion has been ten or twenty years away before. And the challenges of keeping a quantum system isolated from the classical world rise exponentially with its size.

    My opinion is that it's not safe to assume quantum computing will work, and it's also not safe to assume quantum computing will not work. Prepare for the worst in both directions.

    1. Xamol

      Re: Que sera, sera

      The thing about quantum computing is that it will both work and not work at the same time... until you look at it at which point it becomes a cat.

      ...or something like that.

      1. HelpfulJohn

        Re: Que sera, sera

        1: " ... the cat was neither dead nor alive; after being alternately poisoned and not poisoned for over a century, it had become greatly pissed off, miffed, irked and annoyed and it was simply missing."

        2: "... when they opened the box, they found neither an alive cat nor a dead cat but a highly confused dog."

        3: " ... this experiment, when first performed in the distant Galactic Supercluster, resulted in the superposition of two entire cats. Cats, of course, having much mass this then became a matter of blast radius."

    2. Wellyboot Silver badge

      Re: Que sera, sera

      Sustained fusion has been 20-30 years away since about 1952.

      1. zuckzuckgo Silver badge

        Re: Que sera, sera

        Unfortunately the future isn't what it use to be.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Que sera, sera

      By the time ITER pops its Francophone cork-- full tritium-dueterium fusion experiments in 2035 after all, after several rounds of gratuitous PhDs are awarded, and even then only if the construction stays on schedule (in France?)-- we'll have broken the R of RSA with quantum computers. And even if ITER works, it will be 10-20 years before one sees Real Energy(r) as ITER will only demonstrate something more than break even is possible... maybe this time? unlike the previous umpteen fusion tries costing many billions of euros?.

      It would be lovely to have affordable fusion power. Maybe it would help to have working quantum computers to calculate what is needed for successful cost effective fusion on a terrestrial basis. Probably means scrapping ITER before it lights up and building ITER2, ah, cushy tax payer financed jobs all around.

  10. TheSmokingArgus

    Alas, I do sure hope these horseless carriages fail, it would be horrible for the buggies we all know and love.

    But who knows perhaps the environmentals will remain forever too strict to see quantum computing become viable.

  11. danbi

    Ah, the AI

    I am a bit disappointed they didn't share an opinion on AI

  12. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    Ah, but which element?

    whoever is in charge of processing (in the US) should be replaced by a different element

    Gold is the standard, but I'd nominate mercury; it's the fastest.

    1. Ken Shabby

      Re: Ah, but which element?

      Bureaucratium. The only element with a negative half life.

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