Overhype? When I write about startups in the deep tech and quantum computing space, one of the things I always consider before putting pen to paper (or fingers to laptop keys as so happens to be the case these days) is how interesting the company is in regard to what they…

Going Too Far In 2019, Bill Gates stated that it was time for the government to step in and regulate big tech companies. With the likes of Facebook, Amazon and Google dominating our everyday lives, some would say it’s a good thing. Cases of anti-trust and anti-competitive behaviour have hounded US tech companies…

Toppling Dominoes Researchers from Vandersypen’s lab at QuTech, a collaboration between Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) that was founded in 2014, have published a paper in Nature Communications, Electron cascade for distant spin readout, that has come up with a new approach…

AI has its good points but also some that are a little less reassuring. Whether we all have a job in the future is one of them — Elvis Has Left The Building With the millions in the US who have just lost their jobs over the COVID-19 pandemic, putting the country into near economic meltdown along with the rest of the planet, thoughts of artificial intelligence (AI) taking over people’s livelihoods could be viewed as ill-timed.

In the coming years, the blockchain will play a greater role in our lives. Yet that role could be threatened if things are not put in order first. — 53 Qubits Late last year in October, Google announced that it had achieved ‘Quantum Supremacy’ on its 53-qubit quantum computer. The phrase means, in layman’s terms, that a quantum device can solve any given problem that a classical computer/supercomputer can’t. After the announcement, there was both celebration and derision from all corners…

Global warming and the future of the Third Rock from the Sun is big news as we enter the new decade. Solutions are ten for the penny. But quantum computing’s eureka moment may just be here — ‘We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.’ — Terri Swearingen Up In Smoke With the current heatwave and forest fires in Australia as proof (some would say) the planet is undergoing an unprecedented time of temperature rises, freak weather occurrences, and record carbon emissions, the…

Cryptocurrency is spreading like wildfire. In Cuba, too, the disruptive technology is making its mark — Bastion Of Communism There’s no escape from cryptocurrencies, and especially Bitcoin. No corner of the world exists (North Korea and Iran being possible exceptions) where its influence is not being felt. Even in Cuba, that bastion of Communist thought and dialectics for sixty years now (although since Raul Castro’s death things have cooled…

Strangeworks, Inc. sounds like something from the movie A Clockwork Orange. But even the mind of Stanley Burgess couldn’t invent William Hurley, commonly known as Whurley, maybe quantum computer’s very first poster boy — Ode to the Curly-Wurly Man When I was a child, I loved the chewy chocolate bar called a Curly-Wurly (don’t think they’re available in the US). Don’t know why, really, as there were better ones: Snickers, Mars etc. The chewy, elastic consistency of the bar was annoying and really quite bad for your teeth: You…

With the likes of indie book publishing, the Bitcoin craze and other business avenues to ‘get rich quick’ becoming more popular, we look now to some historical perspectives as to why the masses who follow a dream rarely achieve it. The reality is, sadly, only the early adopters and unique outliers ever do, as well as those selling ‘services’ for the specific industry — As Lady Luck Would Have It On January 24, 1848, a few days after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed (ending the Mexican-American War), gold was discovered in California. It was to be the beginning of the greatest dash for wealth in 19th century America. Almost immediately people lucky enough to already be in the…