Considering this states its talking to an actual quantum computer somewhere(at least that's what I'm led to believe by the "Connected to <some instance somewhere>" in the bottom right), I'd imagine this has gotten hugged to death, and hence why we are only seeing the spinning coins rather than it actually resolving.
I've wondered for a long time what the user experience for quantum computing will look like. I had imagined some library with a type for "qbit" and an dsl for making them interact in certain ways and then some kind of async thing where your classical code could run locally while periodically shuttling data to and from wherever the quantum computer is.
This isn't quite that but I guess it's a first step.
Tangent, but interesting: how do you get fair samples from a biased coin?
1. You take a string of biased samples like 001011100101
2. you split it in pairs 00 10 11 10 01 01
3. you keep only pairs with a zero and a one in them 10 10 01 01
4. You assign 0 and 1 to them, e.g. 1 1 0 0, this is a fair sampling from an unbiased coin
Why does it work? Because even if p(0) ≠ p(1), p(01) = p(10).
It's not true that computer randomness is predictable, all recent computers have entropy sources which are essentially quantum in nature – thermal noise.
Question from someone who's not going to even pretend to understand quantum physics..
The explanation says the visualization shows the coin in all possible states. I'm trying to count quickly and it seems like about 8. Does all possible states mean there's an infinite number and 8 are shown for visualization purposes, or is there a finite predictable number of possible states.
I watched how it works, but it seems the rotation is just an animation and a fake. There are two requests: /flip and /info. When you click mouse button, the /flip request is GET immediately and it returns a result of 1(eagle) or 0. After that the coin animation begins with requests to /info which always returns the same response for no clear reason. After several /info requests the coin eventually stops without receiving any new results.
In the many worlds interpretation, if one connected this computer to a machine that would instantly kill you if the result was heads, you as the observer should find that you never die, but rather that the machine always seems to come up tails. Is that correct? Might be cool for some kind of euthanasia patient to experience.
A few years ago I heard a story on NPR about someone who built a site that also used the IBM quantum backend. They had you input a question about what you should do with your life (I think the example was "Should I grow a beard?"). Then the quantum backend would give you a yes or no answer.
The idea here is that if you believe the many worlds interpretation then that quantum decision splits the universe in two, and in one universe you grow a beard, and in the other you don't.
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25 Comments
jwpapi
A physical coin is biased?
scottmsul
I just see a bunch of spinning coins forever and nothing happens with no way to stop it…
ryan-duve
When I click the coin I see an animation of 7-8 blurry coins spinning. Further clicking seems to have no effect. Is something else supposed to happen?
asparagui
Cool idea! This is a really clever way to demo a real-world circuit!
brap
Is this truly live or did they batch random numbers ahead of time?
Rooster61
Considering this states its talking to an actual quantum computer somewhere(at least that's what I'm led to believe by the "Connected to <some instance somewhere>" in the bottom right), I'd imagine this has gotten hugged to death, and hence why we are only seeing the spinning coins rather than it actually resolving.
Traubenfuchs
My observation is too weak, the coins keep spinning.
Maybe I am so disconnected from the rest of reality, I count as absolute, non destructive observer?
__MatrixMan__
I've wondered for a long time what the user experience for quantum computing will look like. I had imagined some library with a type for "qbit" and an dsl for making them interact in certain ways and then some kind of async thing where your classical code could run locally while periodically shuttling data to and from wherever the quantum computer is.
This isn't quite that but I guess it's a first step.
ziofill
Tangent, but interesting: how do you get fair samples from a biased coin?
1. You take a string of biased samples like 001011100101
2. you split it in pairs 00 10 11 10 01 01
3. you keep only pairs with a zero and a one in them 10 10 01 01
4. You assign 0 and 1 to them, e.g. 1 1 0 0, this is a fair sampling from an unbiased coin
Why does it work? Because even if p(0) ≠ p(1), p(01) = p(10).
herodotus
Nice idea, but watching the spinning coins made me a bit nauseous. I had to go away from the page.
its-summertime
from the console
> Failed to get quantum result from server
cloudflare connection timed out
pyinstallwoes
_real_?
mattvr
Hey HN! Creator here. Sorry for the downtime and dizzying spinning coins.
I was surprised to see this on the frontpage this morning and the scale is pushing the limits of our quantum randomness generator
It should be working again now as I'm pushing fixes. Thanks for your patience.
inurqubits
It's not true that computer randomness is predictable, all recent computers have entropy sources which are essentially quantum in nature – thermal noise.
stared
Thank you for sharing!
As a small remark, classical and quantum coins are equally susceptible to bias. So the initial intro is a bit misleading.
nineplay
Question from someone who's not going to even pretend to understand quantum physics..
The explanation says the visualization shows the coin in all possible states. I'm trying to count quickly and it seems like about 8. Does all possible states mean there's an infinite number and 8 are shown for visualization purposes, or is there a finite predictable number of possible states.
hoten
Got 2 tails in a row. Must be broken.
westurner
Quantum logic gate > Universal logic gates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic_gate#Universal_q…
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37379123 :
> [ Rx, Ry, Rz, P, CCNOT, CNOT, H, S, T ]
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341752 :
>> How many ways are there to roll a {2, 8, or 6}-sided die with qubits and quantum embedding?
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42092621 :
> Exercise: Implement a QuantumQ circuit puzzle level with Cirq or QISkit in a Jupyter notebook
ray-pH/quantumQ > [Godot] "Web WASM build" issue #5:
https://github.com/ray-pH/quantumQ/issues/5
layer8
This seems to do roughly the same as the Universe Splitter [0]. (Which used to be free? Not sure.)
[0] https://cheapuniverses.com/
Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30499169
ellis0n
I watched how it works, but it seems the rotation is just an animation and a fake. There are two requests: /flip and /info. When you click mouse button, the /flip request is GET immediately and it returns a result of 1(eagle) or 0. After that the coin animation begins with requests to /info which always returns the same response for no clear reason. After several /info requests the coin eventually stops without receiving any new results.
$ curl https://quantum.orgsoft.org/info
{"status":"ok","message":"Connected to IBM Eagle r3 (127 qubits)","display_name":"Eagle r3 (127 qubits)","alias":"ibm_kyiv","version":"1.20.22","num_qubits":127,"processor":"Eagle r3","url":"https://quantum.ibm.com/services/resources?system=ibm_kyiv"}
$ curl https://quantum.orgsoft.org/flip
1
rschiavone
The animation reminds me me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(TV_series)
TheRealNGenius
[dead]
lazyeye
I wonder what the cost of running this website is?
deadbabe
In the many worlds interpretation, if one connected this computer to a machine that would instantly kill you if the result was heads, you as the observer should find that you never die, but rather that the machine always seems to come up tails. Is that correct? Might be cool for some kind of euthanasia patient to experience.
doctoboggan
A few years ago I heard a story on NPR about someone who built a site that also used the IBM quantum backend. They had you input a question about what you should do with your life (I think the example was "Should I grow a beard?"). Then the quantum backend would give you a yes or no answer.
The idea here is that if you believe the many worlds interpretation then that quantum decision splits the universe in two, and in one universe you grow a beard, and in the other you don't.
I thought it was a fun idea.