Imagining the Twilight movie (2008) as a masterpiece of quantum computing
Hi team,
Only three companies this Monday, but look out for something new and exciting later this week. In the interim:
If you could be quantum entangled to anything, what would it be?
Fake news is still a problem for which no one has a great solution
Giving the travel industry some love
Xanadu is doing something twice unimaginable: quantum computing completed through photons.
Traditional computers operate in binary: all the modern technology that we love and hate and are addicted to — Instagram, the internet, Edward Cullen artificial-sparkling in the Twilight movie, NHL 2k16 — can be traced back to a series of 1s and 0s (I didn’t get this until I read about logic gates). When you think of it this way, the first shock is that it must take such brilliance to build Fortnite or Google Drive from a pile of 1s and 0s. The second shock is that we’re doing some truly astounding things, but it’s all on top of a relatively black-and-white concept — and if the 2010s have taught us anything, it’s that everything is a spectrum. Enter quantum computing. While traditional computers use 1s and 0s to talk to real electrical operators (called transistors), quantum computers revolve around Qubits, which respond to the laws of quantum mechanics rather than the laws of electrical engineering. The first law to know is superposition: Qubits are not binary. They can be dead (0), alive (1), dead and alive at the same time (?), or anywhere in between (0.552392). You might know this idea as Schrodinger’s cat. The second law is that Qubits can be entangled, like voodoo dolls. If we do something to a Qubit in Canada, its entangled brethren in Australia will instantly make the same change. I’m not lying. The idea is that if our computers run on these quantum laws, we’ll be leveling-up by a zillion on the bottom-line sophistication of our programs and models. We can use this might to solve crazy, nearly unfathomable problems like automated drug development or near-perfect models of the market, but there is a catch. Qubits need to be at absolute zero to unlock their quantum side. Typical consumers do not have access to -460°F environments; that’s where Xanadu comes in. They are piloting photon-based, room-temperature quantum computing to bring supercharged problem solving to more consumers.
Xanadu is hiring machine learning specialists, software developers, and software engineers.
Last week, a member of the press came to the office I work at to chat about the future of digital media. Someone, inevitably, asked the fake news question: what should we do about all the lies on the internet? What the speaker said is that he’s not so much bothered by the lies, but by those times when you show someone the truth, prove to someone the truth, give to someone evidence-beyond-reasonable-doubt of the truth — and they look at you and tell you that it’s a lie.
So what can we do about this? New Knowledge has one idea. They sell the ability to ‘detect, monitor, and mitigate social media manipulation’ to large companies and other stakeholders. Their software parses information on the web (scans videos, reads tweets) and looks for things that are out of the ordinary, from awkward sentence rhythm to a strange arrangement of pixels on a photo. When something seems awry, New Knowledge helps stakeholders pursue a course of action: understand the attack, get the word out, partner with law enforcement, and so forth. They want to be there when Russian trolls stir up tension on fracking in America, when “bogus” company accounts target people of color, and when we can’t tell if positive reviews on Amazon are real or bots.
New Knowledge is hiring customer success managers, account executives, engineers, marketing managers, and more. Location is Austin, TX.
Many things and processes in the realm of travel/transportation feel in need of love.
Quick overview: airport snacks are expensive. Lines are long. Margins are low. There are food crumbs in the crannies of most seats. It is considered rational to pay hundreds of dollars for inches of legroom. And (personal qualm) the Acela train from DC to NYC costs, like, a zillion dollars. Much of this situation has to do with the economics of running Amtrak, Greyhound, or an airline - these companies count pennies and corner customers in a sparse market. On the flip side of the universe, software and tech ventures reap giant margins (or have giant investors), compete fiercely for fickle users, and constantly invest in new bells and whistles. Cabin wants to meet these worlds somewhere in the middle. Right now, their product is a luxurious overnight bus ride from LA to SF, but this is supposedly only the beginning. The idea is that with autonomous vehicles on the horizon, the insides of our vehicles can “do more for us:” they can double as hotels, nail salons, gyms, restaurants. And if they do more, we’ll pay more — for a cozy, crumb-less slumber or for french tips. Done right, the unit economics of an industry could shift just a little bit towards the comfortable.
Cabin is hiring a mobile developer.
See you Friday.
Love,
Lea