Technology
Quantum Machines and Nvidia are using machine learning to get closer to an error-correcting quantum computer
ABOUT a yr and a half agolaunch of quantum control Quantum machines and Nvidia announced a deep partnership that can bring together Nvidia firms DGX quantum computing platform and advanced quantum control equipment Quantum Machine. We have not heard much concerning the results of this collaboration for some time, nevertheless it’s now starting to bear fruit and bringing the industry one step closer to the holy grail of an error-correcting quantum computer.
Both firms demonstrated this during a presentation held earlier this yr can use a ready-made reinforcement learning model running on Nvidia’s DGX platform to higher control the qubits within the Rigetti quantum chip through system calibration.
Yonatan Cohen, co-founder and chief technology officer of Quantum Machines, noted that his company has long sought to use classical computing engines to control quantum processors. These compute engines were small and limited, but that is not an issue with Nvidia’s incredibly powerful DGX platform. The Holy Grail, he said, is using quantum error correction. We’re not there yet. Instead, this cooperation focused on calibration, and specifically on the calibration of the so-calledπ pulses” that control the rotation of the qubit contained in the quantum processor.
At first glance, calibration may appear to be a one-time problem: you calibrate the processor before you run the algorithm on it. But it is not that easy. “If you look at the performance of quantum computers today, you get high fidelity,” Cohen said. “But when users use a computer, it’s always not of the best quality. It’s consistently drifting. If we are able to recalibrate it steadily using these sorts of techniques and underlying hardware, we are able to improve performance and maintain (high) fidelity for a very long time, which shall be needed in quantum error correction.
Continuously adjusting these pulses in near real time is an extremely computationally intensive task, but because a quantum system is at all times barely different, additionally it is a control problem that will be solved using reinforcement learning.
“As quantum computers get bigger and better, there are all these problems that come up and become bottlenecks that require really a lot of computing power,” said Sam Stanwyck, product manager for Nvidia’s quantum computing group. “Quantum error correction is really huge. This is necessary to unlock error-tolerant quantum computing, but also how to apply exactly the right control pulses to get the most out of qubits.”
Stanwyck also emphasized that before DGX Quantum, there was no system that might achieve the minimum latency mandatory to perform these calculations.
As it seems, even small improvements in calibration can lead to huge improvements in error correction. “The return on investment in calibration in the context of quantum error correction is exponential,” explained Ramon Szmuk, product manager of Quantum Machines. “If you calibrate 10% better, you get exponentially better logic error (performance) in a logical qubit that is made up of many physical qubits. So we have a lot of motivation to calibrate very well and quickly.”
It is value emphasizing that this is just the start of the optimization and cooperation process. The team really just took a couple of off-the-shelf algorithms and saw which one worked best (TD3on this case). In total, the actual code to conduct the experiment was only about 150 lines long. Of course, this is dependent upon all of the work each teams have done to integrate the varied systems and construct the software stack. However, for developers, all this complexity will be hidden, and each firms expect to create more and more open source libraries over time to benefit from this larger platform.
Szmuk emphasized that on this project the team only worked with a really basic quantum circuit, but it will probably be generalized to deep circuits as well. If it will probably be done with one gate and one qubit, it will probably even be done with 100 qubits and 1,000 gates,” he said.
“I would say that an individual result is a small step, but it is a small step towards solving the most important problems,” Stanwyck added. “Useful quantum computing will require tight integration of accelerated supercomputing – and this may be the most difficult engineering challenge yet. So by being able to really do this on a quantum computer and tune the pulse in a way that’s optimized not just for a small quantum computer, but that is a scalable, modular platform, we think we’re really well on our way to solving some of the most important problems in quantum computing.”
Stanwyck also said the 2 firms plan to proceed this collaboration and bring these tools to more researchers. With Nvidia’s Blackwell chips arriving next yr, the corporate may have an much more powerful computing platform for this project as well.
Technology
Columbus says ransomware gang stole personal information of 500,000 Ohioans
The city of Columbus, the capital of Ohio, confirmed that hackers stole the personal information of 500,000 residents during a July ransomware attack.
In filing In an interview with Maine’s attorney general, Columbus confirmed that a “foreign threat actor” breached its network to access information including residents’ names, dates of birth, addresses, identification documents, social security numbers and checking account information .
Ohio’s most populous city, with about 900,000 people, said about half 1,000,000 people were affected, even though it didn’t confirm the precise number of victims.
The regulatory filing comes after Columbus was the goal of a ransomware attack on July 18 this 12 months by city officials he claimed “thwart” it by disconnecting your network from the Internet.
Rhysida, the ransomware gang accountable for last 12 months’s cyber attack on the British Library, claimed responsibility for the August attack on Columbus. At the time, the gang said it had stolen 6.5 terabytes of data from the Ohio city, including “databases, internal employee logins and passwords, a full server dump of city emergency services applications, and … access from city video cameras,” in response to local news reports.
Rhysida demanded 30 bitcoins, or roughly $1.9 million on the time of the cyberattack, as payment for the stolen data.
Two weeks after the cyberattack, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther told the general public that the stolen data was likely “corrupted” and “unusable.”
The accuracy of Ginther’s statement was called into query the day after David Leroy Ross, a cybersecurity researcher also often called Connor Goodwolf, revealed that the personal information of a whole lot of 1000’s of Columbus residents had been placed on the dark web.
In September, Columbus sued Ross, alleging that it “threatened to make stolen city data available to third parties who otherwise would not have readily available means to obtain stolen city data.” A judge issued a brief restraining order against Ross, stopping him from accessing the stolen data.
In a listing published Monday by TechCrunch on the leak site, Rhysida claims to have transferred 3.1 terabytes of “unsold” data stolen from Columbus, amounting to greater than 250,000 files.
Technology
Threads now has 275 million monthly active users
Meta’s social network, Threads, now has 275 million monthly active users (MAUs), the corporate said on Sunday.
“Yesterday we passed 275 million monthly active users on @Threads. We would like to thank everyone who helped us get this far. There is a lot more to do and a lot to fix, but there is something exciting about this place.” he said Adam Mosseri, the director of Meta who runs Threads and Instagram.
Launched in July 2023 to capitalize on the tens of millions of users leaving X after Elon Musk purchased the platform, Threads quickly gained users and has turn out to be one in all the most important text-first social networks today. The platform reached 150 million MAU in April and 200 million MAU in August, which suggests it has gained 75 million active users in only 3 months.
Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the course of the company’s conference call following its third-quarter 2024 earnings that one million people were signing up for Threads daily.
While user acquisition on the platform is trending upwards, Threads has been battling plenty of issues moderation issues that frustrated users.
Technology
Affirm is launching the product in the UK as the buy now, pay later market faces regulatory changes
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) giant Confirm launches in the UK, its first market outside North America.
Its long-awaited arrival comes as UK lawmakers consider latest rules to align BNPL corporations with other traditional consumer credit services, although such rules are usually not expected to return into force until at the least 2026 — long enough for Affirm to achieve traction and gain favor with consumers and regulators alike.
Founded in 2012, Affirm emerged from a startup incubator called HVF, founded by the co-founder of PayPal Max Levchin (pictured above), who eventually took the reins of Affirm in 2014 to fuel its industrial growth. The company has expanded beyond the US and Canada in 2022and has forged lucrative partnerships with major e-commerce corporations over the years — Affirm has been Shopify’s premier financial partner for nearly a decade, not to say Walmart and Amazon, which last yr chosen Affirm as its first Amazon Pay BNPL partner in the U.S. . Recently, Affirm also acquired the mighty Apple as a client.
“Debt normalization”
The BNPL model is easy: customers are encouraged to buy goods on credit, repaying the debt in several interest-free installments, and the BNPL provider makes money from merchant fees. Or, if the customer may require an extended repayment period, the loan may include interest.
The BNPL market has long been on the radar of UK regulators, with existing operators such as Klarna and Clearpay often criticized for encouraging impulse purchases and debt normalization. So far, this has been done by the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). certain powers to manage BNPL providersbut there are key exceptions, such as interest-free credit services, where fixed-amount contracts provide for debt repayment inside 12 months.
However, latest rules which are in the pipeline could bring BNPL corporations fully into line with other consumer credit corporations. The Labor government last month announced a brand new BNPL consultation with plans to introduce regulations to “ensure people using BNPL products have clear information, avoid overpriced loans and have strong rights when problems arise”.
It’s clear that Affirm is already attempting to position itself favorably with each customers and authorities. Indeed, for the UK launch, the company notes that its interest-bearing payment options won’t include compound interest – as a substitute, the interest shall be fixed and calculated in full on the original amount borrowed.
It’s also value noting that Klarna began charging late fees last yr in the UK, and this is one area where Affirm goals to distinguish itself – it says it won’t charge late fees or another “hidden fees”.
Directly
It’s been a difficult few years for the BNPL sector. Klarna was valued at over $45 billion in 2021, a figure that quickly dropped by 85% to $6.5 billion following the great post-pandemic “correction” that many corporations have experienced. However, last week news broke that Klarna was being priced rose again to $14.6 billion. It’s been a similarly tumultuous time for Affirm, whose ups and downs have followed a trajectory harking back to its European rival.
After its 2021 IPO, Affirm’s market capitalization reached a staggering $47 billion, but the company’s stock has taken an enormous hit, with its market capitalization dipping below $3 billion in the past yr. However, Affirm’s stock has soared to over $13 billion in 2024, and the company is listed on NASDAQ the company recently reported fourth quarter year-over-year revenue growth of 48% and losses decreased from $206 million to $45 million. Levchin also projected profitability in 2025.
We’ve known for a while that Affirm’s next port of call outside the US and Canada can be the UK, and the company’s chief revenue officer Wayne Pommen is the record holder say it will deal with markets where a few of its largest existing partners are already present.
For a UK launch, it doesn’t have any of the big name brands it has in the domestic market, but the proven fact that it counts the likes of Amazon, Shopify and Apple amongst its US customers means it would not be an enormous deal. For now, nonetheless, Affirm intends to operate in the market through flight booking site Alternative Airlines and payment processor Fexco, and “additional UK and international brands are expected to follow.”
In preparation for today’s launch, Affirm told TechCrunch it has already hired roughly 30 employees, including Ruth Spratt who manages the local branch and at the same time plans to extend employment by the end of the yr. And much like your individual “remote first” ethos elsewhereemployees are usually not tied to a selected physical hub.
The company didn’t confirm its next expansion plans in Europe or elsewhere, but said it will “take the same disciplined approach” it has all the time taken to future expansion.
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