Major quantum computing advance made obsolete by teenager (2018)

Link: https://www.quantamagazine.org/teenager-finds-classical-alternative-to-quantum-recommendation-algorithm-20180731/

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44672859

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😆 I postulate that ALL quantum “problems” will eventually be shown to be mere complexities of overly complex layers of software code which would be easily solveable with better ‘standard’ hardware + software engineering solutions.

Best I can tell as a non expert is that QC has to assume some underlying "free" sampling operation from wave function collapse (or "branching" if you're a multiverser, though the distinction eludes me) to provide a fundamental speedup. If the waveform just entangles with the detector which is the simplest explanation, then you'll have to run a gradient descent on multiple quantum calculations to find an answer. I suspect that will always turn out to be the same O() as just doing the damn thing classically for a given accuracy.