Don Horrell

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since Oct 29, 2004
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Recent posts by Don Horrell

There seems to be a large security gap here. How will my laptop be able to exchange keys securely in the quantum computing age?
How will I be able to do online banking or shopping?
Are there quantum-safe versions of public key cryptography?
4 months ago
Hi Barry.

I'm not an expert, but as I understand it RSA is often used to exchange an encryption key (e.g. for AES, which is supposedly safe from quantum) that is then used to encrypt the message.
When Quantum can easily crack the RSA bit, how will we exchange the encryption keys for the quantum-safe symmetric algorithms?
I don't think the answer is going to be quantum key distribution, as my laptop does not support that, and laptops may never support quantum.


Thanks
Don.
5 months ago
I don't think they had quantum when I did my MSc in Computer Based Plant and Process Control (last century).
I hope someone answers this question.

Cheers
Don.
5 months ago
Hi Barry.

How close are quantum simulators like the Java Strange library (https://github.com/redfx-quantum/strange) to real quantum algorithms?
Will it run a quantum algorithm, just more slowly?


Thanks
Don.
5 months ago
Oooo, exciting! Is that some cross-compiler thing, or is it more like a Java library that does the quantum stuff?
5 months ago
Hi Barry.

Taking encryption as an example, we know that some encryption codes rely on the difficulty of factorising large prime numbers & therefore these will be crackable using Quantum. However, I was talking recently to a guy at Cambridge who said that AES encryption is thought to be safe from Quantum.
Why is that?


Thanks
Don.
5 months ago
Hi Barry.

What problems is Quantum better at than classical computing? Is there some "grouping" or set of problems that works best on Quantum?

We hear a lot about factorising the products of large prime numbers & I think I read that the Travelling Salesman problem can be cracked easily using Quantum (is that right?). What a bout the 3D knapsack problem, for example?
Will Quantum get THE solution, or just A GOOD solution for these problems?


Thanks
Don.
5 months ago
Hi Barry.

Is it actually possible to simulate quantum computing on non-quantum hardware?
I have seen some stuff written about simulated annealing, but is this really quantum?

Thanks
Don.
5 months ago
Hi Barry.
Are there any standard programming languages for Quantum?
Will I be able to use Java, or is quantum so different that this question makes no sense?

Thanks
Don.
5 months ago
Hi Venkat.

As a Java dinosaur (all the way back to V1 of Java) the syntax for Lambdas is pretty impenetrable at times & reminds me of "write-only" code, back in the days of C.
I'm in the middle of reading a book about a different programming language & I have just seen a paragraph taking a swipe at Java lambdas: "It is quite common nowadays to look at code and come away puzzled. Java lambda code is a good example."

Many of your replies in this forum say that functional programming makes code easier to understand. How do you square that with these comments?


Thanks
Don.
7 months ago
In some ways it seems to step back a few decades to my days as a C programmer.
I always tried to avoid global variables, so each function would be thread-safe, only using the parameters that were passed in.

One difference is that it was not easy in those days to do multi-threading & certainly difficult to be able to switch between single-threading and multi-threading.

7 months ago
Hi Venkat.

Is there a clash between Object Oriented programming, where objects normally contain some state, and functional programming where functions should not affect state?
Or am I misunderstanding functional programming?


Thanks
Don.
7 months ago
Hi Venkat.

In Cay Horstmann's book "Java 8 for the Really Impatient" he says "The point of all Lambdas is deferred execution."
Is that still true & how does that fit with using Lambdas for functional programming?


Thanks
Don.
7 months ago
Or perhaps the question is: Can I run a graphical version of Ubuntu from a Docker container running in WSL2?
8 months ago
Does WSL2 make that easier?
WSL2 is a true Linux VM running under Windows.
8 months ago