Scott Locklin

Your point? IMO it's an intriguing but completely unproven technology. In contrast, GPUs (a newer technology than quantum computers) waltzed out of the gate with 100x to 1,000x speedups over Pentium IV CPUs barely a decade into their existence.

If D-Wave had shown anything like that, it would be a billion dollar company well on its way to disrupting NVIDIA and Intel in HPC. Instead, after nearly 30 years since the concept and 15 years after D-Wave's founding and ~$100M of VC, it's still just an expensive toy.

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/category/physics/page/4/

All that said, hiring its best loyal opposition to fix that is the smartest thing I've seen Google do in a long time.

And just to end on a positive note, here's a great book on the subject that explains the promise of the technology in great detail:

http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computation-Information-Anniversary-Edition/dp/1107002176

And here's another reason perhaps why Google is leaning so hard on this technology:

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~nando/papers/quantumrbm.pdf

A lot of the tech ones I follow have already been listed so I will try to list some that others may not be aware of.

1. Applied Divinity Studies. Rationalist adjacent. Obviously influenced by Scott Alexander, but less optimistic, a bit more cynical. - https://applieddivinitystudies.com/

2. Scott Locklin's blog. He used to post on HN. Mostly covers tech related things (but physical tech, not web stuff). Many HN readers will find him too abrasive and will miss the point. - https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/

3. Granola Shotgun. Hard to pin down what this blog is about exactly, but generally focused on tradeoffs between different configurations of the built environment. The author will baffle the ideologically prejudiced. He's a gay guy in SF who has nice things to say about Mormons and rednecks. - https://www.granolashotgun.com/

Locklin explains it best in "Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit" [1]:

"quantum computing” enthusiasts expect you to overlook the fact that they haven’t a clue as to how to build and manipulate quantum coherent forms of matter necessary to achieve quantum computation. A quantum computer capable of truly factoring the number 21 is missing in action. In fact, the factoring of the number 15 into 3 and 5 is a bit of a parlour trick, as they design the experiment while knowing the answer, thus leaving out the gates required if we didn’t know how to factor 15. The actual number of gates needed to factor a n-bit number is 72 * n^3; so for 15, it’s 4 bits, 4608 gates; not happening any time soon."

[1] https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-computing-as-a-field-is-obvious-bullshit/

I don't have numbers handy. The real power of kdb+/q comes from the column oriented architecture and the extremely powerful vector functional language q. The language q is inspired by APL. I highly recommend you to check out this article to get a sense of the APL family of languages https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/ruins-of-forgotten-empires-apl-languages/

If you want a database for blazing fast data-storage and retrieval, there are many options available. You start seeing the real benefits of kdb+/q when you use q to simplify very complex operations that aren't easily done in SQL. Also, the high level operators that q makes your code extremely terse. I've written complex backtesting systems that perform data mining on massive datasets - all in one page of very tight q code!

I wandered through the rest of the blog. What an amazing asshat. He should be on display somewhere. His rant about US health issues[1] is breathtaking.

What sort of person begins a description of autism like this?

> Autism. I’m not sure this doesn’t fall into the category of “insanity.” It may also have something to do with hormonal disruption. Either way, the fact that some huge fraction of the population who thinks they don’t have to be kind and thoughtful to others because “muh disability.”

I don't want to read the biography he is referring to but I do want to read a psych profile of Scott Locklin. He is the platonic ideal of a cranky, covid-denying asshat.

[1]https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/11/20/us-public-health-problems-which-are-more-serious-than-corona-chan/

Found it! It's Burton Klein's classifications of the firm.

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/planning-of-invention-part-1-burton-klein-and-dynamic-economics/

It is a bit absurd what a decay there is here, from obviously good to increasingly conservative & closed models. But this discussion on power struggles was excellent yet lacked some of the larger context of what mode the business at large operates in, & Klein here had some semi-interesting if pointed ideas to get us thinking about modes of thr firm.

Unfortunately Scott- who is covering this has been pretty highly insensitive & crude repeatedly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6116063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29393152