iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Steve Flammia

QIP @qipconference.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

We're pleased to announce the key dates for QIP 2027, as follows (refer to the website qipconference.org/2027/ for up-to-date information). We look forward to your participation!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Immigration is good. Good for us, good for the immigrant. Allowing immigration is not a nice thing we do for immigrants. It is merely ceasing to do a bad thing to immigrants.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Charlie Bennett and Gilles Brassard win the Turing Award. Congratulations to both. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/t...

nytimes.com

Turing Award Goes to Inventors of Quantum Cryptography

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Dripto Debroy @dripto.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Registration is now open for QEC26, to be held this June in sunny Santa Barbara, CA! See the registration page at qec-conference.org for a link. Also, the deadline for submissions is next Friday. Make sure to get those in and spread the word to friends and collaborators!

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

This doesn’t even scratch the surface though. I predict ICE will get tasked with “monitoring election integrity” for the midterms.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

The track record with humanitarian institutions and NGOs is much better, admittedly. 8/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

The Peace Prize track record is uniquely terrible. The fundamental flaw is rewarding unstable, real-time geopolitics instead of lifetime achievement. Every time a winner’s legacy curdles, the prize's reputation diminishes, permanently. 7/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

The omissions of deserving people (most famously Gandhi), and the inability to revoke it in bad cases further reinforce the sense that the prize is political and inconsistent. 6/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Some obvious examples: Obama (for what?), Kissinger/Le Duc Tho (how is this peace?), Rabin/Peres/Arafat (reward people involved in violence), Aung San Suu Kyi (Rohingya), Abiy Ahmed (Tigray). 5/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

This sometimes rewards people involved in violence: many wars end through bargaining with such people. If you reward “peace talks,” you inevitably end up honoring figures many see as undeserving. 4/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Prizes age badly when a process collapses or the laureate later governs horribly. The committee is sometimes trying to encourage peace in real time, not certify moral sainthood after the fact. 3/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

The Peace Prize is not given as a lifetime achievement award. It often rewards a process (negotiations, ceasefires, diplomacy, advocacy) rather than a settled outcome. That creates a failure mode of premature bets. 2/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Is there any major, ostensibly legitimate prize with a worse track record than the Nobel Peace Prize? I believe that the “bad picks” aren’t random; they’re structural. 1/7

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Ken, you should know that music from 1990 is closer in time to the birth of rock 'n roll than to the present day.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

I suspect it’s still open. I would need to read this more carefully to be certain, and I’m at a workshop, so you’ll have to wait on tenterhooks.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

This raises new questions about Biden’s dogs.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Parameterableitungseinfachintegralfindungsfreude?

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

This trick has worked in the past, at least briefly; see False Dimitry. @zachweinersmith.bsky.social en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_D...

en.wikipedia.org

False Dmitry - Wikipedia

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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Interesting bit of sociology: They are really studiously avoiding any mention of quantum computing. First and only mention came in the last few words of the presentation by Johansson.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Charlie Bennett should win the Nobel prize in Physics this year.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

This would be an important breakthrough if it holds, but I'm skeptical on first glance. Large parts of this were clearly written by a generative AI. Doesn't mean it's wrong, but I suspect it's a "vibe theorem", i.e., not a theorem. I'll wait for Vidick, Regev, etc. to weigh in.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

Governments have been over-promised, but program managers aren’t naive. Forcing academics + ‘clueless’ industry partners (imperfectly) aligns theory with reality. It’s frustrating (for both sides!), but still positive-sum. IMO funding a mixture is strictly better than funding only fundamentals.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I’m glad you caught that. :)

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

That's Kurt Anyon, the Austrian–American physicist after which anyons are named. He's walking with Gustav Karl Persson, of GKP fame.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Bad Policy: Subjecting PhD students and postdocs to 4-year visa limits, subject to immigration officials' review. This bureaucratic overregulation will reduce US competitiveness and weaken US science. There needs to be more awareness and discussion of this terrible idea news.bgov.com/daily-labor-...

news.bgov.com

Foreign Student Status Duration Limits Clear White House Review

A Department of Homeland Security proposal to restrict the duration of foreign students’ tenure in the US has cleared White House review, the final step before its public release.

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Reposted by Steve Flammia

John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

The QEC25 conference hosted by @yaleqi.bsky.social was really excellent, and videos of all talks are available. So much recent progress on quantum error correction! qec25.yalepages.org

qec25.yalepages.org

QEC25

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

💯! There's even a word for that in German!

Screenshot of a post saying, "In German, the word "Schiedsrichtertrotzdank", means the simultaneous feeling of annoyance and gratitude you feel when a referee makes a valid point."

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Victor V. Albert @vva.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

"Every American taxpayer is a silent shareholder in that success. If we walk away now, we lose not just future breakthroughs but also what we have already earned." thehill.com/opinion/tech...

thehill.com

Congress wants to cut the smartest investment taxpayers ever made

Virtually every smartphone on the planet runs on a chip paid for by American taxpayers — a chip that I helped invent. Now Congress is moving to cut funding for the National Science Foundation that …

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Nalini Joshi @monsoon0.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Rodney Baxter, Australia’s celebrated mathematical physicist, the Baxter of Yang-Baxter equations, passed away yesterday 🥲 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_...

en.wikipedia.org

Rodney Baxter - Wikipedia

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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Both the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations have now passed funding for science agencies with moderate cuts and flat funding, respectively. Both bills are quite far from the president's budget request, which proposes massive cuts to science funding.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

This doesn’t even scratch the surface though. I predict ICE will get tasked with “monitoring election integrity” for the midterms.

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Reposted by Steve Flammia

John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Andrew Houck, Director of the Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage, makes an eloquent case for the value of the National Quantum Initiative Quantum Research Centers. Hey Congress, how's that reauthorization coming along?

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John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Raymond Laflamme 1960-2025. A great scientist, renowned for his pioneering contributions to quantum error correction. A great leader, founding director of the Institute for Quantum Computing. A great colleague and teacher whose legacy continues to inspire us. uwaterloo.ca/institute-fo...

uwaterloo.ca

IQC and Waterloo mourn the loss of Raymond Laflamme | Institute for Quantum Computing | University of Waterloo

Raymond Laflamme, a trailblazer in quantum information processing and pioneer of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo, died on June 19 after a lengthy battle with ca...

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

RIP Ray Laflamme, gone too soon. Ray was a stellar scientist, the founding director of ⁦‪the IQC‬⁩ and ⁦‪of CIFAR's‬⁩ Quantum Information program, but more importantly a warm & generous human who built community and helped many (particularly junior researchers). May his memory be a blessing.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

I believe Vidick is in Lausanne, but still an awful blow to science. Glad no one was killed.

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Frank Verstraete @fverstraete.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Happy to see our book "Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics" published in English www.panmacmillan.com/authors/fran.... Unlike other popular science books, we explain quantum and its applications in the way working physicists use and understand them, without shying away from the many-body problem.

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Tom Hollenstein @tomhollenstein.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy. Details found here👇 www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

queensu.ca

Queen’s Special U.S. Doctoral Recruitment Initiative | School of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral AffairsDown arrowDown arrowDown arrowDown arrowDown arrowDown arrowDown arrowDown arrowDown arrowDown...

Queen’s University is a globally engaged, research-intensive institution dedicated to attracting and supporting exceptional PhD students who will significantly advance our research mission.

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 27/05/2025

The US Administration has indefinitely blocked *all* student visa applicants from getting a visa interview. Worldwide, unconditional, no end date. All. International students are crucial to the US university system, American innovation, and future US prosperity.

forbes.com

Rubio Reportedly Pauses New International Student Visa Interviews

More than 1.1 million international students were enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities in the 2023-2024 school year.

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Ryan O'Donnell @booleananalysis.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

This! I like to say, "Let p|A denote distribution p conditioned on event A. Imagine a world where the laws of probability are the same, except (p|A)|B need not equal (p|B)|A. Except you don't have to imagine, because it's literally our world! Now explore probabilistic algorithms in this world."

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

PS: You recover classical (possibly probabilistic) computation if your state stays diagonal in the standard basis at all times. PPS: psd = positive semidefinite, but I guess you knew that.

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

States 𝜌 are psd matrices with unit trace; measurements E_k are psd and ∑_k E_k = Id; probability of outcome k is Tr(E_k 𝜌); Dynamics are unitary matrices acting by conjugation. Computations start in some state, |0⟩⟨0|^⊗n, apply local unitaries and output is a measurement in the standard basis. QED

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

No no! Only the amplitudes are negative! All probabilities are nonnegative and sum to one. It's very beautiful, I'll see if I can do it in a single post...

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Steve Flammia @sflammia.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

My favorite explanation of quantum *mechanics* is "noncommutative probability theory", and quantum computing is just the theory of computation in that universe.

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