The thing is operating close to absolute zero, and indeed the increase in noise with temperature severely degrades the machine's performance, but this is exactly as you'd expect, so I fail to see your point.

The secrecy pretty much went away when they came out stealth mode.

Now they published several papers in Nature and are quite open.

When I visited them I was surprised that there were no restrictions on taking pictures and nothing was off limits.

I recently visited D-Wave looked at their chips and deep freeze containment. Shot a snapshot of Geordie Rose standing in one of the open boxes.

You may think they are misguided, but their tech is for real. Even Scott Aaronson doesn't deny that.

There is no classical computer hidden inside, but there is still reasonable doubt as to exactly how quantum the device is, and if it will ever deliver clear cut quantum speed-up.

No, the D-Wave machine can only solve the Ising equation. Universal adiabatic quantum computers have been shown to be able to emulate gate model quantum algorithm, but for the more restricted current D-Wave architecture a mapping is (probably) not possible. Nevertheless the class of problems they can solve is still pretty large, and is applicable to useful optimization use cases and learning algorithms.

The benchmark did indeed not demonstrate a quantum speed-up, but it in fairness to D-Wave this was a test designed based on the customers requirements i.e. for them acing this benchmark was good enough to justify investing in this technology.

My understanding is that the algorithm that was comparatively fast on a classical computer was hand optimized by a graduate student, it was not a generic annealing algorithm solver.

But the paper on this effort of 'beating' D-Wave on a classical machine is yet to be published, so this is all from blog hearsay.

You are a bit behind the times. This was true as long as D-Wave was in stealth mode.

At this point they are quite open and have published several papers in Nature.

... I got the impression that he is not overtly concerned about this ongoing controversy, although he did mention he prepared another paper to demonstrate entanglement on the chip.

But his focus is clearly on tackling hard tasks with immediate applicability (for instance in deep learning).

... seems to be rather unimpressed with the idea

I once had a non-technical manager and she told me what I did was simply "magic" to her and others and while she knew the results provided weren't as simple as it seemed to them, others in the organization felt it was.

It's a very difficult concept for non-technical people to understand and part of the life of any developer to deal with. It's the same thing many developers feel about management and administration and we all need to share in the responsibility of not assuming it's easy and/or "magic".

If it was only shoddy experiments that'll be one thing. But some theoretical physics has gotten so used to divorcing itself from experimental verification it's turning into fairytale science.

Maybe that'll throw a monkeywrench into the viral notion that we are living in a simulated universe.

Not holding my breath though.

Reputable journals are only marginally better. Just witnessed a back and forth where some research was attacked by a prominent scientist. The assumptions the latter made weren't quite on target, so the attacked researchers submitted a paper pointing this out. This passed anonymous peer review but then the paper solicited the opinion of this star scientists. He dismisses the paper with the most bizarre arguments that give the impression that he didn't even read it. Then the prestigious journal turns around and endorses this position and rejects the paper.

Absolute astounding and sobering.

Disclaimer: I am not a party or author in this but covered the controversy on my blog, and hence have been shown the rejection email.

Flat earthers, creationists and climate change deniers are immensely annoying but this is still a terrible decision. Trolls will never go away, but they are only kept in check by challenging them.

On the other hand science can benefit from intelligent and and well informed commentary and like any other human activity benefits from critical, constructive media coverage and public debate.

In the final analysis science is too important to just leave it to the scientists.

Seriously, that video was actually better than all three of the prequels combined.

Especially the Yoda bit.

I wish I was kidding.

Second that.