@benroyce @erikcats @signalapp For the record, we do not have quantum computers yet, nor do we know when or even if we'll have them for any outside-the-lab purposes.
Good encryption is never a bad idea though 馃槉
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"Senatus Populusque Romanus" 馃槼
@signalapp I love this but, despite my two Masters' degrees in English, I don't understand it - which probably goes a long way in accounting for why I love it
#encryption depends upon basically really hard math problems to work
this has worked well for a long time
but now we have #quantumComputing
while it is in its infancy it makes really hard math problems really easy
so that means in some time, encryption will stop working (all banking and finance, all military comms, etc: it can be hacked)
luckily there are encryption schemes that are resistant to quantum computing
but they have to be implemented
#Signal implemented it
@benroyce @erikcats *Some* really hard math problems.
If large-scale quantum computers turn out to be viable, certain classes of problems are going to be impacted more than others.
It is not true that "all" encryption will stop working, even for generous definitions of "all" and "stop working".
It's certainly bad enough, however. And we now have cryptographic algorithms which are believed to be resistant to *both* classical computer and quantum computer attacks. Which is good.
@benroyce @erikcats @signalapp For the record, we do not have quantum computers yet, nor do we know when or even if we'll have them for any outside-the-lab purposes.
Good encryption is never a bad idea though 馃槉
@jwcph @benroyce @erikcats @signalapp I was about to post something exactly to this meaning!
Also, I would even avoid saying that, if actually made feasible, quantum computers will make hard mathematical problems "easy"; rather, I would say that they would solve them quickly, and much more so than currently imaginable with classic computer architecture. The difference in terminology has to do with how one actually counts the operations that need to be performed in order to solve the problem. Additionally, there is the problem of errors, but let's not get to technical (yet).
@paraw@mathstodon.xyz @signalapp@mastodon.world @benroyce@mastodon.social @jwcph@helvede.net @erikcats@dice.camp There's also the fact that every time so far that some company has claimed "quantum supremacy" and boasted of having "solved" a certain precisely-chosen problem multiple orders of magnitude faster than possible with a classical computer, a different set of researchers have looked at that problem, reframed it, and come up with a way to solve it in comparable time using a classical computer.
The level of hype really is staggering.
@paraw @jwcph @erikcats @signalapp
yeah i heard error correction is the big problem with quantum computing
the problem is in #military #quantumComputing R&D, there's definitely advances we're completely unaware of
#turing (and mathematicians from #poland who don't get enough attention on the topic) broke #germany's #enigma machines in #WWII
but it wasn't until 1974 that the world got its first real details about #bletchleyPark
so you can be almost certain #china, #usa, #europe: somewhere some team is on the crux of or has already broken high level #encryption
Great, but when will you remove the requirement for a phone number and let one account to be used on more than one phone?
@signalapp Where is poll function?
@signalapp
Waiting for the replies to turn into another tech-Karen show...
No, wait. They already did.
@signalapp Thank you. Keep up the good work.
@signalapp
Still waiting for the Android tablet version.
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