Y Combinator-Funded Startup To Do Quantum Computing -- Only Better

An anonymous reader writes: A "spaceshot" company that emerged from Y Combinator three summers ago and is targeting a revolutionary change in the way computers work has landed $64 million to help it in the race against much bigger tech giants. Rigetti Computing, which operates out of Berkeley and Fremont, is tackling quantum computing and going up against research being done by the likes of IBM, Intel, Microsoft and others... Rigetti is building a cloud quantum computing platform for artificial intelligence and computational chemistry. It recently opened up private beta testing of 'Forest', its API for quantum computing in the cloud. It integrates directly with existing cloud infrastructure and treats the quantum computer as an accelerator.
"The potential to make a positive impact on humanity is enormous," said Chad Rigetti, the startup's founder and CEO -- who declined to say whether the company is actually earning any revenue yet.

A better question to ask

[Anonymous Coward]

"Chad Rigetti, the startup's founder and CEO -- who declined to say whether the company is actually earning any revenue yet."

who would also decline to say whether the company is doing proper quantum computing yet.

Re:

[coastwalker]

I am looking at the orange banner and thinking 'I have a virus infection'. Ha bloody ha. I expect my sense of humor will recover.

Re:

[MrMr]

I the the joke's on slashdot. Still looks better than the mobile site.

Re:

[hackwrench]

Which refuses to stay logged in for more than a few page views at a time. I can almost never reuse a login to post, and then when I log in after writing the post, it will often go somewhere else after logging in without submitting the post.

Make it a week, or two.

[DrYak]

There's no point in visiting this site again until over a day has passed.

Given dupes, slow news, slow editorial (...huh ?) process, etc.
I would say waiting a until over a week has passed is better.

Re:

[Tackhead]

"Chad Rigetti, the startup's founder and CEO -- who declined to say whether the company is actually earning any revenue yet." who would also decline to say whether the company is doing proper quantum computing yet.

If he knew how much revenue he was getting, he wouldn't know whether the revenue growth rate was growing or shrinking. How the fark is he supposed to get Series A funding at a good valuation like that? Naw, man, he did it right - assume a given momentum sufficient to get the next round of fu

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Their quantum computer works, and that explains why the CEO doesn't know his revenue.
They do their accounting directly on the quantum computer, and the revenue figure is still in a superposition.
Asking the CEO "What's your revenue?" is like asking Schrodinger "How's your cat?"

Well, it's quantum.

[hackwrench]

Some people's misunderstanding of "quantum" results in Schrodinger's indeterminacy principle being thtown into the mix resulting in a condition where a company must simultaneously be doing quantum computing right and wrong. Also, descriptions of quantum computing fail to acknowledge the presence of logic gates. I haven't read this article yet to determine if it follows the pattern though.

Re: A better question to ask

[mnemotronic]

I guess I ain't got religion yet. Quantum computing seems like the CS dept's answer to cold fusion.

Hey! I've got an idea -- cold fusion powered quantum computing! It can compute the proof that Martians are living in Grovers Mill, NJ and using faster-than-light neutrinos to tap Trump Tower from Obama's secret underground military base near the Lincoln Memorial.

Cloud Quantum Computing

[bistromath007]

Yeah, okay. $20 says this turns out to be a giant scam inside of five years

Y Combinator

[nitehawk214]

Is there anything that comes out of Y Combinator that isn't a buzzword-laden funding scam?

Re:

[darkain]

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they teach at the Y. Even successful companies to come out of them are still filled with this bullshit nonsense up and down.

Re: Y Combinator

[nitehawk214]

They just define "success" as "succesully for a bunch of suckers to give them money".

It's also possible this is just an early April Fool's post. Shit has been old for a decade.

Re:

[locater16]

Can't, tell, if, April, fools story yet. Must, not, give in! Must, type, like, Captain Kirk.

April First?

[Jonathan P. Bennett]

Is this the first of Slashdot's April Fools posts? It's getting harder to tell.

Re:

[lucm]

Is this the first of Slashdot's April Fools posts? It's getting harder to tell.

We live in a strange time. Donald Trump is the president, Facebook makes 2x more money than Ford, and that profit wouldn't be enough to cover Uber losses while it's decimating the taxi industry. So yeah, April Fools is all year round.

Re:

[TeknoHog]

I also found this file called "Trump Intelligence Allegations". If that isn't an April Fools, I don't know what is.

Eyebleed

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF just happened now everything looks like shit with slashdot redesign. WTF?!?!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

They copied the "Hacker News" layout.

Re:So momey was spent

[whipslash]

Actually it was me. Money wasn't spent. Hence "Slacker News". BAH HUMBUG to you to

Re:So momey was spent

[whipslash]

Cool. See ya

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are you going to go, Reddit? That's the worst of them all.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have this theory someone took over a bunch of low-user-ID accounts, and they then just periodically use them to post "Slashdot's finally gone too far and I must avert my eyes!"

Re:So momey was spent

[whipslash]

What exactly are you upset about? That I responded to a rude comment with a little rudeness of my own? I'm not your butler

Re:

[belthize]

So you're Logan Abbot huh ? Shrug. SourceForge hasn't been all that interesting in years and /. feels more and more like work to visit.

Abbott says that they have a lot of good things planned for both sites. "The biggest thing I want to stress is that we are committed to serving our user base, which consists of the Slashdot community, and the SourceForge users and developers," he says. "We're not going to take any shortsighted approaches that may have been taken in the past. We're focused on building on an

Re:

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback.

Re: So momey was spent

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this for real?! The admins here are going around downmodding people who asked legitimate questions about the veracity of a submission here?!

Re:

[whipslash]

No, just me, and one person

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[whipslash]

I responded to a rude comment attacking one of my editors. Weird that it's upsetting to people

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[whipslash]

First of all, I didn't mod your post down. I modded the parent down. Second of all, I wasn't calling you rude nor saying you attacked anyone. Again, I was talking about the parent comment by the_bionic_lemming.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[whipslash]

No worries. My bad too. Just got ruffled by the original comment.

Re: So momey was spent

[mnemotronic]

Group hug!

Re:

[belthize]

How did you mod the parent down if you posted. That's a basic premise of /., mod or post but not both.

Re:

[bored_engineer]

Alas, your joke went live a few hours before the first of April where I am, so I was quite confused for a moment. Other than the colors, I really like the front page, though. :-)

Re:

[ChoGGi]

...I want ponies

Re:

[__aaclcg7560]

I can't tell if the 'Silicon Valley Business Journal' is real or not, too.

It's real. I don't recall when the name got changed. It used to be the "San Jose Business Journal" in the 1990's when I read it regularly.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose [bizjournals.com]

New Slashdot look? Yuck!

[hduff]

New Slashdot look? Yuck!

Re:

[hrafn42]

! emphatically agree.

Re:

[__aaclcg7560]

It is. I don't think "Slacker News" will ever take off.

How quantum computing *really* works

[GalenBB]

Here's how quantum computing really works:

It splits reality into millions of possible universes, trying a different answer in each one. Then it uses quantum interference to destroy every universe where the answer comes out wrong. When it's done, you know the answer you have is right.

For What It's Worth...

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" [amzn.to] by Antonio Garcia Martinez. The author and his two engineers leave the startup they worked at to create a startup at Y Combinator to create a better version of the Digg toolbar (remember toolbars?) for Google advertisers in 2010. I'm at the part where they get served with an intellectual property lawsuit, as one of the engineers wrote half of the code base at old startup. Fun times.

I doubt this book will replace Startup: A Sil [amzn.to]