{"id":1485,"date":"2007-04-06T08:56:12","date_gmt":"2007-04-06T15:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1485"},"modified":"2007-04-06T08:56:12","modified_gmt":"2007-04-06T15:56:12","slug":"pcp-slinging-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2007\/04\/06\/pcp-slinging-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"PCP Slinging Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So many times scientists are very harsh on science journalists.  Thus it is refreshing to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/news\/407652\/qa-d-waves-geordie-rose\/\">this article<\/a> in the MIT Technology Review by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jason_Pontin\">Jason Pontin<\/a> on D-Wave&#8217;s recent Orion quantum computer.  The article includes an interview with D-Wave&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/dwave.wordpress.com\/\">Geordie Rose<\/a> by Pontin which is rather refreshing mostly for the fact that Pontin pulls out the PCP theorem on Geordie (Gunslinging computer scientists come equiped with the PCP theorem strapped to their belts.  Only recently were the schematics for how to build this gun made accessible to mere mortals like us physicists.)  The article seems rather fair to me, airing both Geordie&#8217;s views as well as asking the hard questions, includes criticisms from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/blog\/\">Scott<\/a> and Umesh Vazirani, as well as a more moderate view from Seth Llloyd.  Whether you are satisfied with the answers Geordie gives, of course, is a different matter!  For example, me I don&#8217;t think that the current setup they have scales if they continue with the same setup they have here (energy gap goes like one over problem size, I might buy that thermalizing helps a bit, but am extremely skeptical when the energy from the environment will swamp the energy spectrum), but this is different from believing that it&#8217;s not possible to modify the path they are taking to actually scale their system.<br \/>\n<b>Update:<\/b> Here is the <a href=\"https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?URI=www-nc.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/08\/business\/yourmoney\/08slip.html&amp;REFUSE_COOKIE_ERROR=SHOW_ERROR\">New York Times version<\/a> of the article, where, sadly the PCP theorem has been removed.  Sad, I mean all the latte-sipping Volvo-driving lefties I know can speak elegantly in an instan<del datetime=\"2007-04-09T19:57:01+00:00\">ce<\/del>t about the PCP theorem and approximation algorithms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So many times scientists are very harsh on science journalists. Thus it is refreshing to see this article in the MIT Technology Review by Jason Pontin on D-Wave&#8217;s recent Orion quantum computer. The article includes an interview with D-Wave&#8217;s Geordie Rose by Pontin which is rather refreshing mostly for the fact that Pontin pulls out &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2007\/04\/06\/pcp-slinging-journalists\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;PCP Slinging Journalists&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-science","category-quantum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}