Greg White
@gregswhitenoise.bsky.social
🇦🇺 Postdoc and Humboldt fellow at FU Berlin, interested in all things quantum. Big cricket fan, occasional astrophotographer.
For context, to ground the conversation and explain one of the issues. USD20M, which is a self-reported (likely low-balled) estimate of what OpenAI burned in *one week* in their scooping race, would fund 100 full-time postdoctoral positions for 2 years (including overhead). 100 postdocs. 2 years.
I also choose my research problems based on viral Twitter rumors, on account of my deep respect for whatever
"We're all worried," as what it means to do research (in my field, Theoretical CS) seems to be shifting, and shifting fast. What to do? Senior researchers must lead by example, knowing that not everything will pan out. What I'm suggesting below may not work everywhere, but here's my own advice: 1/
Don't forget (a) heavy subsectioning; (b - i; ii) overly emphatic adjectives and adverbs; (c) referencing expressions with (...); (d) insane use of display math; or (e) introductions written in the stylistic equivalent to the colour grey. Every day seeing this state of affairs worsen makes me sad.
Rafael Wagner@quantumrw.bsky.social · last mo.AI-generated paper starter pack: include your prefered! Starting with a classic. AI-hallucinated references! arxiv.org/pdf/2607.07808
My good friend and famed lover of questionnaires @eliesgf.bsky.social has a simple question for the quantum info community: what do you think when you hear the terms "strong" and "weak simulation? He (and by extension, me) would love it if you filled in this Google Form! forms.gle/wfFcwBPdaafv...
What does it mean to simulate a quantum computation?
Dear colleagues, We are some quantum researchers at FU Berlin. We were recently surprised among ourselves that we used the same words in very different incompatible ways when it comes to classically...
docs.google.com
I know it's partly skewed because of the holiday in the US, but jeez it's getting hard to keep up with quant-ph
"I haven't really seen further than others, but they were looking in another direction." Academic tip: we're not all Newtons, and that's completely OK! You don't need to be a genius to do good research.
I recently submitted my PhD thesis 🎉 I am now planning the next step of my journey. I will stay in Berlin for personal reasons, which makes me curious which research groups and companies would hire postdocs or equivalent for remote positions. If you have any leads, please DM!
Congratulations to Charlie Bennett and Gilles Brassard for winning the 2026 Turing Award (akin to the Nobel Prize for Computer Science)! They invented quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. awards.acm.org/turing 🧪 ⚛️ 1/
awards.acm.org
Yesterday was by quite some distance the biggest day in Scirate history, even accounting for scite inflation
Let me try to explain why it's important to study the foundations of quantum mechanics. (1/n) (Have to do some breathing exercises, b/c to me it's blindingly obvious that "understanding the most important theory in physics" is something physicists should care about, but apparently opinions differ.)
Sean Carroll@seanmcarroll.bsky.social · last yr.Nature (and @lizziegibney.bsky.social) take a more-than-usually systematic look at the greatest failure of modern physics: the fact that we can't even agree on what quantum mechanics says. And the leader is an approach that is notoriously not well-defined. Ugh. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What's the jurisdiction of Betteridge's Law with respect to academic articles?
The second to last afternoon session of #QCTIP2025 features great talks on classical shadows to estimate properties of quantum systems.
It's lunchtime on Day 3 and now seems like an excellent time to thank our wonderful sponsors who supported, participated in, and made this event happen! #QCTiP
Our second plenary session has Nathan Wiebe both captivating and entertaining our audience -- showing how exponential improvements in gradient-based quantum optimisation are possible. The trick? Don't look at your gradients, go fully quantum! #QCTiP
Had been feeling like there weren't enough Fermions so let out a big sigh of relief when Alexander Schuckert came up to tell us about fermion-qubit fault tolerant quantum computing in the Hahn Hall #QCTiP
Marcel explains the task of single-copy stabilizer testing and a lower and upper bound on the sample complexity.
QCTiP 2025 kicks off tomorrow! Join us at the beautiful Harnack House starting at 8:30 for registration, coffee, and snacks. Get ready for an exciting program featuring: 1/2
The doors to #QCTiP2025 are about to open! From next Wednesday to Friday, Berlin will host the largest international conference on quantum computing theory in practice—at the beautiful and historic Harnack House, where Schrödinger, Einstein, and Planck once came and went.
Every concert you attend you get one (1) song for which you can take out your earplugs
Schrödinger originally invented the cat image as a gag. But with the help of science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, it became the most well-known quantum mechanics thought experiment. 🧪
How Schrödinger’s Cat Got Famous
Fifty years ago, science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin popularized physics’ most enigmatic feline.
nautil.us
The registration deadline of the main event of the year on quantum computing theory in practice (#QCTiP2025) will be #tomorrow, anywhere on Earth. qctip2025.com
🚨The registration deadline for #QCTiP2025 in Berlin is this Friday! Don't miss out—secure your spot now: qctip2025.com/registration... 🎟️
Registrations
Registrations Registrations close: 14 March To register please create an account on our ConfTool portal, accessible through the link below (or use the same account you created for submissions of ta…
qctip2025.com
After the smash hit debut album "NISQ", @preskill.bsky.social releases his long-awaited sophomore project "Megaquop". Critics laud the forward thinking and maturity evident in this release but wonder -- can lightning be caught in a bottle twice? arxiv.org/abs/2502.17368
arxiv.org
The more I think about it, the more cynical I am about making press releases about a certain claim coincide with a Nature paper that claims something materially different. Even if they end up factually correct, this is the heart of the issue with mixing capital interests and science
Time to register and book your trips to Berlin, tickets are hot and selling fast! For a list of accepted talks, see the below link--looking like a stellar program 🤩 qctip2025.com/wp-content/u...
qctip2025.com
@qctip2025.bsky.social · 2y agoRegistrations are now open for #QCTiP2025: qctip2025.com/registration.... Don’t wait too long—spots for participants without a talk are first-come, first-served!
Forever having mini-tantrums when Google takes me to the HTML version of an arxiv paper
