Matt Hastings is guest posting over at Tobias’ place

For those who are into the adiabatic model of quantum computation I suggest going here and having a read.

Tobias has gone all open sciencish

Yay for Tobias and his new blog!

If you be all quantumish and are a fan of open science then I highly recommend giving it a look. Having worked a lot with Tobias I can say that he has loads of excellent ideas and the right sort of research style to make this blog an extremely interesting read. Hopefully this blog will become a new place for some of us to do our discussin’ and researchin’.

So far Tobias has been posting thoughts which stem from this recent paper with Ashley Montanaro (which you may have seen Ashley talk about at QIP) on all sorts of things involving quantum boolean functions.

Quantum computers – for when you can’t use a $5 wrench

Sadly, this is probably why I have a job.

A random new paper

Well, seeing as I work in the Bristol QI thoeory group I guess it was only a matter of time before I was an author on a paper which uses tricks involving random quantum states.

Below is the abstract for this new paper that I’ve written together with Caterina Mora and Andreas Winter.

Are random pure states useful for quantum computation?

We show the following: a randomly chosen pure state as a resource for measurement-based quantum computation, is – with overwhelming probability – of no greater help to a polynomially bounded classical control computer, than a string of random bits. Thus, unlike the familiar “cluster states”, the computing power of a classical control device is not increased from P to BQP, but only to BPP. The same holds if the task is to sample from a distribution rather than to perform a bounded-error computation. Furthermore, we show that our results can be extended to states with significantly less entanglement than random states.

For those of you who will be going to QIP in January you will see these results discussed alongside the results from this great paper by David Gross, Steve Flammia and Jens Eisert.

Crazy undergrad music flashback

For some reason I can’t put my finger on I thought of these two fantastic songs today…

The first is “All I need” by Air, I’m pretty sure this video clip would have to qualify as being my favourite of all time. The second is “Drinking in LA” by Bran Van 3000 – which I just generally think is an awesome song.

Enjoy.

No more Surfdom

It seems that Tim Dunlop has pulled the plug on Road to Surfdom. One of the first and the best Australian political blogs.

For a long time Road to Surfdom was one of my favourite blogs and it played a huge role in dragging me into the Australian political blogging scene. I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one that was heavily influenced by this blog.

All of those who contributed to Surfdom deserve a lot of thanks for all the hard work that they put into it. Believe it or not, running a blog and consistently coming up with high quality material is really hard work and I am ever so grateful that they made the effort.

Winning the victory

My title is a bit weird no?

The internets are abuzz with commentary on Obama’s victory and, like in everything, there is a lot of politics being played out in this commentary.

A lot of conservatives are out there trying to downplay Obama’s success. Expect to hear a lot of “it wasn’t really a whitewash” or “he only won because of the economy” or “because he is black” (I’m looking at you Janet Albrechtsen and you sure as hell are not getting a link) or any number of variations on these themes.

At first glance this is just bitterness. It isn’t. The conservative movement is trying very hard to cut down Obama’s mandate for change.

The Republicans have an obvious reason for doing this. They are wounded badly and are fighting to keep any shred of political capital that they have left. However, I’m sure that we will see the Obama victory downplayed by many around the globe as those who have benefited from the tactics and issues championed by American conservatives over the last 20 to 30 years try to halt the progressive forces that have been unleashed by the Obama campaign.

Make no mistake. Obama’s victory is a huge event. Please don’t forget this in the coming days, weeks, and months!

Obama has won by a huge margin and in the process his campaign has overturned may of the myths of modern politics. Think on this, an African American has been elected President. What’s more, he is a liberal who has had to suffer from race-baiting and red-baiting throught that campaign. He still won, and he stuck to the issues. That is huge. It is a lesson that should be learnt the world over.

The Obama campaign won partially off the back of “new media” support. Obama’s rise gained momentum from his popularity on the web. His campaign’s ability to harness new technology as a tool for getting their message out has been a major contributing factor to their success. It has helped them to respond to attacks faster, to craft the message in the MSM and also to harness support both in terms of votes and funds. This is a huge lesson that cannot be emphasized enough. They have established a new model for campaigning which many in political circles will be envious of.

I wonder how many of Europe’s leaders will head the lessons of the Obama campaign? Here in the UK politics is still driven by memes that are established in the MSM. People here still don’t seem to have realized that the Government and the MSM can be challenged, and even driven, via pressure from a solid netroots movement.

Finally, and my words really fail me here, I’m so happy that I was able to witness yesterday’s victory. It gave me so much hope that the world can actually be changed for the better and that so much of the negative politics that I have grown up to accept as “fact” is really nothing of the sort.

Here is Obama’s victory speech for those who haven’t yet heard it. It is really something special…

Congratulations America

You’ve lifted the spirits of countless people around the world.

Congratulations to all those who worked the Obama campaign and to all those people who went out there and decided to vote for change!

For all those people tallying votes today: Add it up

It hasn’t got a lot to do with politics but it’s a great song – Violent Femmes: “Add it up”

Will Hopey be preznit elect tomorrow?

Anyone that has been following the math reckon that Obama has this one in the bag. I sincerely hope so but for some odd reason I can’t admit to myself that it is going to go down that way.

This campaign has been on the go pretty much since the ‘06 midterms and finally it has come to an end. Geez, I’m saying “finally” and I’ve done nothing on this campaign except to watch from afar. Since the (still for me) incomprehensible re-election of Bush in ‘04 so many have been longing for the day when America finally throws the Republican Party out of the White House.

A lot of questions are on my mind today. What is going to happen to the nets when we don’t have the Republicans to kick around anymore? Will we actually start to debate crazy stuff like policy? If Obama wins how long will he be able to hold his coalition of supporters together?

The political landscape has changed massively in the last few years. We’ve had the emergence of the nets, we’ve had the wars, and we’ve had the crazy-assed financial crisis. It’s clear that the rules of the game for the next President are going to be significantly different from the rules of the last 20 or 30 years.

McCain’s wisdom is grounded in the experience of an era which has come to an end. I think that the right leader for these times is one that has shown that they can adapt to overcome. Barrack Obama and his staff have run a campaign that has not only transformed his party, it has altered the way that many in the world view politics. His campaign has thrived in the current political climate which suggests that they are equipped to deal with the challenges ahead. This reason alone, to me, is the best reason for voting for Obama.

Well, that and I actually agree with a lot of his policies…

That’s enough from me,

SO IF YOU ARE IN AMERICA GET OUT THE DOOR AND VOTE!!!!

GO HOPEY!!!!