Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: computing

Quobly Toolbox Explores Quantum Phase Estimation Pipeline With Tensor Networks

An international collaboration between a French quantum startup and a major Taiwanese electronics manufacturer has yielded a new open-source tool for exploring a critical area of quantum computing. Quobly and Taiwan’s Hon Hai Research Institute, the R&D arm of Foxconn, jointly released a numerical toolbox dedicated to the Quantum Phase Estimation (QPE) algorithm, described as a cornerstone of fault-tolerant quantum computing with major applications in quantum chemistry and materials science. While QPE’s theoretical benefits are understood, simulating its practical resource needs has proven difficult; the toolbox aims to bridge this gap by allowing researchers to explore implementations and their implications. The tool focuses on practical, interpretable numerical experiments, enabling full circuit executions for up to 20 qubits and circuits ranging from 1,000 to 100,000 gates on standard laptops.

Quantum Phase Estimation Toolbox for Molecular Systems

While the theoretical underpinnings of QPE are well established, simulating its practical demands has proven a significant hurdle, limiting exploration beyond simplified models. The toolbox addresses this gap by offering a platform for practical, interpretable numerical experiments, allowing scientists to investigate QPE implementations without requiring access to full-scale quantum hardware, which is currently unavailable. Built upon advanced tensor network techniques and the open-source quimb library, the toolbox facilitates the preparation of initial states using DMRG and matrix product states, and allows encoding of molecular Hamiltonians into quantum circuits through methods like trotterization and qubitization. Researchers can directly compare standard QPE with the single-ancilla Robust Phase Estimation (RPE) method, analyzing circuit depth, gate counts, and potential error sources.

New Fragnesia Linux flaw lets attackers gain root privileges

Linux distros are rolling out patches for a new high-severity kernel privilege escalation vulnerability that allows attackers to run malicious code as root.

Known as Fragnasia and tracked as CVE-2026–46300, this security flaw stems from a logic bug in the Linux XFRM ESP-in-TCP subsystem that can enable unprivileged local attackers to gain root privileges by writing arbitrary bytes to the kernel page cache of read-only files.

Zellic’s head of assurance, William Bowling, who discovered this new universal local privilege escalation flaw, also shared a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit that achieves a memory-write primitive in the kernel that is used to corrupt the page cache memory of the /usr/bin/su binary to get a shell with root privileges on vulnerable systems.

Dell confirms its SupportAssist software causes Windows BSOD crashes

Dell confirmed that its SupportAssist software is causing blue-screen crashes on some Windows systems following a wave of user reports about random reboots affecting Dell devices since Friday.

SupportAssist is a software suite developed by Dell that comes pre-installed on most new Dell computers running Windows 10 or Windows 11.

A Dell representative told customers on the company’s official forums on Wednesday that the latest SupportAssist Remediation service update is the one triggering 0xEF_DellSupportAss_BUGCHECK_CRITICAL_PROCESS errors and advised them to remove the service to resolve the crashes.

Venus Clouds Driven by Solar System’s Largest Waves

“Up until now, we used a global circulation model (GCM) for Venus that is similar to Earth’s, but this model doesn’t include the hydraulic jump which we have now identified,” said Dr. Takeshi Imamura. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30535/venus-clouds-d…gest-waves](https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30535/venus-clouds-d…gest-waves)

What explains the unique behavior of Venus’ clouds? This is what a recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets hopes to address as an international team of scientists led by Japan and included the United States and Spain investigated a longstanding conundrum regarding Venus’ meteorology, specifically cloud weather patterns. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand planetary cloud patterns and what this can teach us about planetary formation and evolution.

For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to simulate Venus’ cloud weather patterns, specifically focusing on a 6,000-kilometer-wide (3,728-mile-wide) cloud front whose behavior has puzzled scientists for years. The primary puzzlement is the origin of the massive cloud wave, which current global climate models can’t explain. Along with the puzzlement, the motivation behind the study also comes from a knowledge gap in the formation of the lower cloud regions within Venus’ atmosphere.

In the end, the researchers found that a phenomenon known as a “hydraulic jump” was responsible for producing the massive cloud wave front. This jump is caused by changes in airflow in the lower cloud regions combined with a strong updraft, resulting in sulfuric acid vapor (which comprises Venus’ clouds) to condense, forming the massive cloud wave front. This study helps explain the connection between the Venusian atmosphere motion and clouds.

This Physicist (Unexpectedly) Derived Gravity from Information

Sponsors: Accelerate your efficiency. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at http://shopify.com/theories Sign up for Claude today at http://claude.ai/theoriesofeverything and checkout Claude Pro — which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today’s episode. I personally subscribe to The Economist. FLASH SALE to May 18: 50% off annual (double the usual!) No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE

What if gravity is just entropy in disguise? Professor Erik Verlinde joins me to argue that gravity isn’t a fundamental force—it’s thermodynamic, emerging from quantum information the way gas pressure emerges from molecules bouncing around. We explore why spacetime may be stitched together by entanglement, and how dark energy and dark matter both pop out automatically without extra particles or parameters. Verlinde explains why the cosmological constant problem is a red herring, and why there may be no final theory of physics. When asked where the universe comes from, his answer is one word: chaos.

SUPPORT: Support me on Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/su… me on Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkou… Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_… JOIN MY SUBSTACK (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com LISTEN ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9… TIMESTAMPS:

  • 00:00:00 — Thermodynamic Gravity and Information
  • 00:06:35 — Beyond Effective Field Theory
  • 00:13:08 — Turtles All The Way Down
  • 00:25:41 — Entropy as a Force
  • 00:36:31 — Entanglement and Spatial Connectivity
  • 00:47:31 — Deriving Inertia and F=ma
  • 00:56:41 — De Sitter Space Challenges
  • 01:02:01 — Dark Matter and Milgram
  • 01:11:51 — The Emergence of Time
  • 01:21:01 — Statistical Gravity Fluctuations
  • 01:27:01 — Quantum Computational Complexity
  • 01:36:01 — Physics Intuition and Mentorship
  • 01:47:31 — Beauty, Garbage, and Chaos

LINKS MENTIONED: Papers, books, websites:

Videos:

  • • A 2 Hour Deep Dive into Entropy
  • • The Mathematics of String Theory [Graduate…
  • • The Debate That Divides Physics: Is the Un…
  • • The Physicist Who Found Quantum Theory’s U…
  • • Retrocausality & The Transactional Interpr…
  • • The Physicist Who Proved Entropy = Gravity
  • • The Physicist Who Says Time Doesn’t Exist
  • • The Most Astonishing Theory of Black Holes
  • • The (Simple) Theory That Explains Everythi…
  • • The Crisis in String Theory is Worse Than…
  • • Dark Dimensions: NEW THEORY Unifying Dark…
  • • MIT Scientist’s Discovery: “Black Holes Mi…
  • • The Woman Who Broke Gravity | Claudia de Rham
  • • Solving the Problem of Consciousness | Ste…
  • • Frederic Schuller: The Physicist Who Deriv…
  • • The Loop Quantum Gravity Debacle: Carlo Ro…
  • • An (Elementary) Introduction to Quantum Co…
  • • Can Physics Explain Its Own Laws?
  • • The Nobel Laureate Who (Also) Says Quantum…
  • • This Cosmologist Discovered Something Stra…
  • • Michael Levin: Consciousness, Biology, Uni…

SOCIALS:

  • Twitter: / toewithcurt
  • Discord Invite: / discord

Guests do not pay to appear. Theories of Everything receives revenue solely from viewer donations, platform ads, and clearly labelled sponsors; no guest or associated entity has ever given compensation, directly or through intermediaries. #science.

JOIN MY SUBSTACK (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com.

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9…

TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 — Thermodynamic Gravity and Information 00:06:35 — Beyond Effective Field Theory 00:13:08 — Turtles All The Way Down 00:25:41 — Entropy as a Force 00:36:31 — Entanglement and Spatial Connectivity 00:47:31 — Deriving Inertia and F=ma 00:56:41 — De Sitter Space Challenges 01:02:01 — Dark Matter and Milgram 01:11:51 — The Emergence of Time 01:21:01 — Statistical Gravity Fluctuations 01:27:01 — Quantum Computational Complexity 01:36:01 — Physics Intuition and Mentorship 01:47:31 — Beauty, Garbage, and Chaos.

Continue reading “This Physicist (Unexpectedly) Derived Gravity from Information” | >

Liquid crystals enable on‑demand skyrmion formation at room temperature

Researchers have recently found a new way to summon useful structures in magnetic materials using light, heat, and electric fields. This new method, described in a new study published in Physical Review Letters, may lead to more energy-efficient and flexible technologies for data storage and optical devices.

Within the realm of condensed matter physics, scientists study how macroscopic properties emerge from the interactions of vast numbers of microscopic particles in materials. In magnetic materials, skyrmions—nanoscale, topologically stable swirling magnetic structures—arise under certain conditions.

While they have been observed in magnets, superconductors, and liquid crystals, their nucleation is often random or requires extreme conditions. Creating these structures on demand is difficult due to high energy barriers and lack of easy, reversible control.

These computer voices sound human enough to mislead, but one layer of speech still breaks the illusion

We are surrounded by computer-generated voices these days, from navigation systems and voice assistants to automated announcements. But how human do these voices actually sound? A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, published in the journal Speech Communication, shows that our perception is affected by three things: how something is said, what is being said, and whether we understand the language.

In two consecutive experiments, the researchers investigated how people perceive the difference between real and synthetic voices. They created 16 short German sentences, such as: “The boy gave his father a hat.” The team then manipulated the sentences in three different ways by changing the word order, replacing words with similar-sounding pseudowords, and combining both changes. This resulted in four versions of each sentence. All versions were recorded by eight human speakers and eight computer-generated text-to-speech (TTS) voices.

In the first experiment, 40 German-speaking participants rated how human the voices sounded. Overall, the computer-generated voices were perceived as less human than the human voices. An analysis of the voices’ acoustic characteristics revealed objectively measurable differences in sound between human and TTS-generated voices.

/* */