"Privacy and the Quantum Internet" (in the October 2009 Scientific American) seems like a very cute and completely useless idea. The authors' proposal is to implement an eavesdropping-free "quantum private search" which makes use of quantum entanglement to allow the sender to verify that her query has not been observed. (See, for example, their ( Read more... )

Scott Aaronson notes that Stephen Wolfram doesn't believe in quantum computers. (Heck, my mom doesn't believe in quantum mechanics.) Being a computational theory geek, Scott asks (my paraphrase!): are there any problems that can be feasibly solved by a quantum computer, but which cannot be feasibly verified by Stephen Wolfram (or at least by a ( Read more... )