“For a long time, the tech industry liked to think of itself as a meritocracy: it rewarded qualities like intelligence, competence, and expertise. But all that barely matters anymore.”
Sam Kriss reports on the next generation of AI technologists.
Researchers have shown how the frequencies and bandwidths of individual photons can be tuned over a wide range inside a short length of standard optical fiber. They anticipate that their technique will be useful in future quantum computing and communications networks.
John Baez wants to wrangle one of the most abstract branches of math to better model the natural world. It sounds like a pipe dream. But is it? Read the latest Qualia column:
They have stolen most of the code for their model and vibe coded the rest (happy to share links if needed). Makes me angry when things like this get promoted without verification
These guys are scammers btw, and their statement about ARC-AGI is deceptive: u can always throw longer compute and more tries at a problem to get a higher score. A well-known tactic of many “LLM wrapper” companies trying to make a name for themselves
This, I admit, doesn’t sound like a projective measurement all that much 😅 something something the basis is part of the Lindbladian
“Couple the system to a bath at some temperature with a very strong interaction term” if I may
So the world is still unitary according to QM, but the type of interaction u have with the measurement device is highly entangling and dissipative, meaning you don’t just end up in a nice superposition but rather in a state that’s reached by what looks like non-unitary dynamics
But this assumes unitarity and reversibility, right? By “local” I meant that dissipation is a thing, so you’d model the interaction as a Lindbladian rather than just plain quantum Hamiltonian. In my mind that takes care of the many worlds thing but again, could be wrong
I have no math to back this up btw I just had these thoughts ages ago and forgot the details. But surely you don’t need many worlds for emergent effects due to large-scale local entanglement? I probably should read up on this instead of doing vibe physics
Wait why does it have to be a many worlds kind of thing? Why can’t it become stat phys at a larger level? Large-scale entanglement to me just approaches stat phys where macroscopic quantities emerge as moments/averages of microscopic ones.
I suppose one can view measurement as some sort of locally strong, entangling/decohering operation between the quantum system and the measurement apparatus. I’m being v handwavy here, but maybe I’m just not as into the measurement problem hoodoo as others! 😅
So I can model a measurement as a projection operator, but that’s irreversible unlike, supposedly, the rest of QM. But methinks that’s okay because things are allowed to be irreversible in QM locally anyway
I don’t think that’s an issue nowadays? Full disclosure it’s been ages since I’d read about anything as fundamental as the measurement problem, but I know most folks treat observers as quantum. The issue is modelling the resulting interaction in a sensible way?
Reading the first and second, feeling somewhat queasy, and then the last one lands the punchline
Masteful sequence of quotes in Mike and Ike which I never noticed before
No greater praise for a textbook has ever been put down in words
A sepia toned, seated portrait of mathematician Georg Cantor in his early twenties. His wavy hair is swept back and he has a curly beard and thin mustache. Cantor wears a dark jacket and white shirt, with a tie in a bow at this neck.
Mathematician Georg Cantor was born #OTD in 1845. He is the founder of set theory and developed the concepts of cardinal and transfinite numbers.
These shocking results led his former professor Kronecker to call him a "corrupter of youth."
Image: Oberwolfach Photo Collection
Absolutely love this!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...
Kudos to the Norwegian Consumer Council for their efforts to fight enshittification!
www.forbrukerradet.no/news-in-engl...
Read their report here:
storage02.forbrukerradet.no/media/2026/0...
A great overview of the evolution of #container technology via #Docker. It also provides a quick peek into the various technology bits that enable containers work.
If you want to learn more about how containers work, then consider starting with wizardzines.com/zines/contai... by @b0rk.jvns.ca.
Interesting format for a review article. 24 brief chapters, each offering perspective from a small subset of the 69 authors on a particular topic.
quantumfrontiers.com/2026/02/11/q...
My PhD student Wen Fan (fanweneddie.github.io) is looking for summer internships! ✨His research interests are at the intersection of AI and formal methods, and his work with me is exploring how LLMs can be used to build more usable and scalable verification tools.
New blog post!
Autodiff through function types: Categorical semantics the ultimate backpropagator
https://julesh.com/posts/2026-02-20-categorical-semantics-ultimate-backpropagator.html
Quantum computing is usually framed in complex linear algebra. This paper asks: what is the least you need to add to reversible classical computing to recover quantum computation?
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
@manchegobaby.bsky.social
We are at an airport restaurant. A robot just drove up to us with our food, said, "Hi! Here I am!" and then drove away with our food.
What I’m seeing in some of the Epstein revelations about well known scientists who maintained contact after his conviction, is folks who always thought they were the smartest person in any room, sure they could shrewdly navigate a route that gets them what they want without getting dirty themselves.
I've been asked several times to comment on arxiv.org/abs/2602.11457, which claims to reduce the qubit cost of factoring by 10x.
My take is that they demand a *lot* more qubit connectivity for that number. Your mileage depends entirely on how plausible you find those demands.
New many-body postdoc offering at @UMDscience; come join us! umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UMCP/job/Uni...
The paper is up! A project impressively led by Kenny Chen, co-advised with Julian Mestre, on Forrelation, a slightly-artificial up task introduced by Aaronson to show an exponential separation between classical and quantum computers.* Small 🧵 below!
📝 arxiv.org/abs/2602.07503
*(in the query model)
