- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

confusing email not intended for cypherpunks
by Karl Semich 04 Mar '25

04 Mar '25

my stolen possessions were not in the car. the thief made off with tens of thousands of dollars worth of almost everything i own and engage regularly, as well as all my identifying documents like my birth certificate and passport, and also thousands of dollars of cache and all my old cards including my drivers license, all my laptops, ipads, cell phones, repair parts, motors for making robots, a high-end robot vacuum. it looks like they stole all the old broken devices i'd accumulated over the years to repair. and all my clothes, underwear and warm clothes; all my luggage from visiting my family over the holidays i've lost it some of us are saying authorities (the fbi?) are doing this to us, maybe because we never properly followed up after posting something that sounded like a murder confession over a decade ago and having them get involved ARE YOU THE AUTHORITIES?? i have been assuming that you are a criminal (some kind of human trafficking crime organization) who wants me to think you are the authorities. I do _NOT MEAN TO ACCUSE YOU_. I am TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE AND HOW TO BE YOUR FRIEND

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'YOU'VE TALKED TOO MUCH': President Trump, Vice President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy spar over the Russian war in a tense public exchange, with Trump saying, "You're gambling with World War III." https://trib.al/r0GKyOj
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

https://www.facebook.com/share/1ACstv2xaU/ YOU'VE TALKED TOO MUCH': President Trump, Vice President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy spar over the Russian war in a tense public exchange, with Trump saying, "You're gambling with World War III." https://trib.al/r0GKyOj

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"You're gambling with WWIII." President Trump and Vice President Vance get into a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy over the handling of the war in Ukraine. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DFMEbKgBW/
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DFMEbKgBW/ "You're gambling with WWIII." President Trump and Vice President Vance get into a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy over the handling of the war in Ukraine.

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Apple Comms Director's Texts Reveal Criticisms Of Judge
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

Apple Comms Director's Texts Reveal Criticisms Of Judge <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/2303202?nl_pk=87c9365b-e736-431…> By Dorothy Atkins An Apple communications director's text messages came to light Wednesday on the last day of a high-stakes hearing into whether Apple complied with a 2021 antitrust injunction, revealing the director had criticized the judge extensively when the hearing began in May. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/2303202?nl_pk=87c9365b-e736-431…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/2303202?nl_pk=87c9365b-e736-431…>

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Fwd: Confirmed - Bloomberg Intelligence Gen AI Event
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Bloomberg Intelligence <noreply(a)mail.bbgevent.com> Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 2:48 PM Subject: Confirmed - Bloomberg Intelligence Gen AI Event To: Gunnar Larson <G(a)xny.io> [image: Bloomberg] Dear Gunnar Thank you for your interest in attending the *Bloomberg Intelligence - Gen AI: Scaling laws post DeepSeek* event on April 2, 2025. *We are happy to confirm your attendance and look forward to seeing you.* *Event details:* April 2, 2025 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm Bloomberg, 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 <https://www.google.com/maps/search/731+Lexington+Avenue,+New+York,+NY+10022…> *Add to calendar:* Outlook <https://mw.marketpartner.com/calendar/?clientId=bbg&eventId=gen_ai_scaling_…> | Google <https://mw.marketpartner.com/calendar/?clientId=bbg&eventId=gen_ai_scaling_…> | iCal <https://mw.marketpartner.com/calendar/?clientId=bbg&eventId=gen_ai_scaling_…> Bloomberg Intelligence © 2025 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved.

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President Trump after intense exchange with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the White House: "This is going to make great television." https://www.facebook.com/share/r/15XowoYDoa/
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/15XowoYDoa/ President Trump after intense exchange with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the White House: "This is going to make great television."

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Who Benefits Alongside Elon Musk If He Succeeds in Killing the CFPB: the Megabanks on Wall Street that Underwrite His Tesla Stock Offerings
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

Pam Martens and <https://wallstreetonparade.com/about-3/about/>Russ Martens <https://wallstreetonparade.com/about-3/about/>: February 28, 2025 ~ <https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Bank-Logos-Thumbn…>On June 29, 2010 when the electric vehicle company, Tesla, launched its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq Stock Market <https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-announces-pricing-initial-public-o…>, its underwriters were trading powerhouses on Wall Street: Goldman, Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank Securities. Over the next dozen years, Tesla would utilize these investment banks and others to raise billions more in secondary stock offerings <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2020/12/08/yet-another-stock-offeri…> of Tesla shares. It was a very happy marriage. The Wall Street megabanks made big fees on the underwritings and Musk was able to cash out tens of billions of dollars for himself in Tesla stock sales. That happy, mutually beneficial relationship turned sour when Musk borrowed $13 billion from a consortium of the megabanks to help fund his purchase of the social medium platform, Twitter, in 2022. (Musk has since renamed Twitter as “X.”) The banks got stuck with these loans after Musk torpedoed the reputation of Twitter, lost major advertisers <https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/musks-political-ascendancy-stirs-h…>, and tanked its value. On February 14, the Financial Times reported that the bank lenders have now been able to sell all but $1 billion of that debt tied to Musk’s purchase of Twitter – ostensibly because of Musk’s First Buddy status with the President of the United States. Musk may be the richest man in the world *on paper*, but monetizing that paper into hard cash is another matter. The 10K (Annual Report) filed by Tesla on January 30 of this year with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) carried this loud, shrill alarm bell: *“If Elon Musk were forced to sell shares of our common stock, either that he has pledged to secure certain personal loan obligations, or in satisfaction of other obligations, such sales could cause our stock price to decline.* “Certain banking institutions have made extensions of credit to Elon Musk, our Chief Executive Officer, a portion of which was used to purchase shares of common stock in certain of our public offerings and private placements at the same prices offered to third-party participants in such offerings and placements. We are not a party to these loans, which are partially secured by pledges of a portion of the Tesla common stock currently owned by Mr. Musk. If the price of our common stock were to decline substantially, Mr. Musk may be forced by one or more of the banking institutions to sell shares of Tesla common stock to satisfy his loan obligations if he could not do so through other means. Any such sales could cause the price of our common stock to decline further. Further, Mr. Musk from time to time may commit to investing in significant business or other ventures, and as a result, be required to sell shares of our common stock in satisfaction of such commitments.” The non-bold type immediately above raises highly problematic questions. According to the 2024 Proxy filed with the SEC, as of March 31, 2024, Musk owned 20.5 percent of the shares outstanding in Tesla. (See page 151 of the proxy <https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465924053333/…>.) According to the proxy, that includes common stock and “all shares of common stock subject to options or other convertible securities held by that person or entity that are currently exercisable or exercisable within 60 days of March 31, 2024.” No other single entity, including mutual funds or institutions, comes close to Musk’s ownership in Tesla. As of yesterday’s closing price on Nasdaq, Musk’s 715,022,076 shares that he owned as of March 31 of last year, have a current market value of $201.6 *billio*n, representing the largest portion of Musk’s wealth. <https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Tesla-2024-Proxy-…> Most ultra wealthy people try to diversify away from heavily concentrated stock positions. But for some unexplained reason, Musk wanted to concentrate his wealth deeper into a single stock position. Now we learn from Tesla’s 10K SEC filing that Musk was borrowing money from banks (which potentially took part in one or more Tesla stock offerings) so he could buy more Tesla shares in the secondary stock offerings – notwithstanding that this could be interpreted as an insider trying to push up the stock price. While the banks may now be off the hook for the bulk of the loans they made to Musk to enable his purchase of Twitter, Tesla’s SEC filing suggests that the banks’ personal loans to Musk – for his purchases of Tesla stock in secondary offerings – are still outstanding and are collateralized with (wait for it) Tesla stock, which is on a sharp downward track. Bloomberg News reported this morning <https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tumbling-tesla-shares-leave-investors-103000…> on the dramatic slump in Tesla’s share price, writing this: “Shares of the Elon Musk-led electric-vehicle company are down about 40% from their late 2024 high, a reversal that accelerated in recent days after data showed Tesla’s European car sales nearly halved in January. This week’s roughly 17% decline in the share price suggests the slowdown in Tesla’s mainstay auto business is starting to unnerve traders. That’s bad news for a stock whose fortunes have been driven by investor enthusiasm as much as fundamentals.” Donald Trump and Elon Musk share a common belief in a transactional model, devoid of compassion, that defines their personal and business lives. It can be summed up as “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours; defy me and you become my target for retribution.” Trump verbalized this model on February 18 when he explained why the Associated Press, after more than a century of being part of the White House Press Pool, and receiving 59 Pulitzer Prizes, has now been banned by Trump. Trump stated: “[The Associated Press] has been very, very wrong on the election on Trump and the treatment of Trump and other things having to do with Trump and Republicans and conservatives. And they’re doing us no favors. And I guess I’m doing them no favors. That’s the way life works.” Trump, disturbingly, frequently refers to himself in the third person <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6145972/#:~:text=In%20The%20Danger….>. Equally disturbing, Trump appears to be unaware that it would be corrupt for a news outlet in a democracy to be doing “favors” for an individual it has been assigned to cover objectively in its news reports. The Associated Press has now filed a federal lawsuit <https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277682/gov.uscourt…> “to vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the United States Constitution and to prevent the Executive Branch from coercing journalists to report the news using only government-approved language.” AP had earned Trump’s wrath by refusing to change its style-guide to reflect Trump’s demand to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. That nonsensical demand was seen as sending a message to the press that it should see all things, big and small, as Trump wanted them to be seen. The back scratching between Trump and Musk is crystal clear. Musk gave more than a quarter of a billion dollars <https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?committee_id=C0…> to bolster Trump’s presidential campaign, making Musk the largest enabler of getting a 34-count convicted felon installed in the Oval Office. Trump is now scratching Musk’s back by giving him and his minions of coders and software engineers unprecedented access to tap into classified data stored in the U.S. government’s computers <https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/warren-wyden-secure-indepe…> – notwithstanding the dangerous threats to national security this presents. One of Musk’s top priorities has been to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the federal agency that investigates predatory financial firms that swindle seniors, students, military families, and others. To date, the CFPB has returned more than $21 billion to victims of financial abuse over its 15 years of existence. On February 7, Musk Tweeted: “CFPB RIP <https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887979940269666769?lang=en>,” with a graphic of a tombstone. A 404 Error message now appears on the front page of the CFPB website and its social media pages have been deleted at X (Twitter), and Facebook. The entire video playlist on the CFPB’s YouTube channel <https://www.youtube.com/@cfpbvideo/playlists> has been deleted. That channel previously had hundreds of videos educating the most vulnerable Americans on how to avoid being scammed by financial predators. Multiple federal lawsuits have been filed against this unprecedented and outrageous attack on a federal agency that fights against scam artists. Notable among them was a lawsuit brought in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). The lawsuit <https://www.nteu.org/-/media/Files/nteu/docs/public/cfpb/CFPBDismantle.pdf> charges that these actions against the CFPB violate the separation of powers principles embedded in the U.S. Constitution that assign specific powers to the legislative branch (Congress) and specific powers to the Executive Branch (the President). The CFPB was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, duly passed by both houses of Congress, and signed into law by President Obama. The legislation sought to address the megabanks on Wall Street collapsing the housing market and U.S. economy in 2008 through egregious acts of corruption and tricked up accounting. On February 14, the federal judge assigned to the CFPB case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, issued the following order <https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Judge-Amy-Berman-…> that included this directive, among others: “…it is hereby ORDERED that until the resolution of plaintiffs’ motion for temporary restraining order [Dkt. # 10], which, with the parties’ consent, will be deemed to be a motion for preliminary injunction, the following orders shall remain in place: “It is ORDERED that Defendants, including their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, (hereafter collectively, ‘Defendants’) shall not delete, destroy, remove, or impair any data or other CFPB records covered by the Federal Records Act (hereinafter ‘agency data’) except in accordance with the procedures described in 33 U.S.C. § 44. This means that defendants shall not delete or remove agency data from any database or information system controlled by, or stored on behalf of, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the term ‘agency data’ includes any data or CFPB records stored on the CFPB’s premises, on physical media, on a cloud server, or otherwise.” Notwithstanding that order, the video playlist on the CFPB YouTube channel has not been restored as of this morning. Musk’s involvement in the ransacking and attempted shutdown of the CFPB may stem from mixed motives. The CFPB was in the process of suing some of Musk’s major stock underwriters <https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-sues-jpmorgan-chase-…>, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, for “failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud” on the payment network, Zelle. On February 12, Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, held a profanity-laced Town Hall with his workers, where he called the Trump-fired Director of the CFPB, Rohit Chopra, a “son-of-a-bitch.” Wall Street has had its guns out for the CFPB since its inception because it maintains a complaint database, with detailed complaint narratives direct from consumers, which can be searched via a keyword by other regulators and journalists to spot patterns of fraud by a specific financial institution. This morning, that database shows that complaints *with narratives* against Goldman Sachs have not occurred since December 23, 2024. The graphic below appears above that stale data <https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/search/?d…> . <https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CFPB-Complaint-Da…> This past week, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee and the other Democrats on that Committee, released a new analysis <https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/ahead-of-cfpb-forum-bankin…> showing that since the Trump-Musk attack on the CFPB, the agency is processing 80 percent fewer complaints. Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee also provided a list of 38 CFPB enforcement cases <https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/trump-musk_attack_fact_sheet.p…> against big corporations that have now seen their investigations frozen. One of the investigations that is now in limbo is the Zelle case against Wall Street megabanks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo – all of which have been a Tesla underwriter at one time or another. According to Senator Elizabeth Warren, Elon Musk may have another direct reason to want to kill the CFPB. At a forum she convened this past week on the attacks on the CFPB, she revealed that Musk plans to create a payment system called “X Money” on the former Twitter social media platform he now owns. That would put that product directly in the cross-hairs of the CFPB. Senator Warren said this at the forum: “Elon Musk wants to offer a new ‘X Money’ feature on his social media platform. But some other apps are already out there—and Musk would have to compete against them. By seizing control of the agency, Musk can now root through all the CFPB’s confidential data that DOGE has accessed on these potential competitors. “As Musk launches his new app, he faces oversight from the CFPB. His plan seems to be to eliminate the watchdog, which would leave him free to scam and steal however he wants. “And that is why I invited Musk to this hearing today. Congress and the public deserve answers about why he is trying to kill the CFPB—and answers about what he would gain personally if he is able to shut the agency down. “No surprise: Musk is a no-show. He’s too afraid to show up in person and defend his actions. He hides behind a gusher of silly tweets. But Elon, in case you’re watching from your bunker, or your Oval Office, it’s not too late. We’re going to be here for another hour and a half. We saved a seat for you and we all have plenty of questions.” Musk never appeared at the forum.

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Arkansas Hits GM With Suit Over 'Deceptive' Driver Data Sales
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

Arkansas Hits GM With Suit Over 'Deceptive' Driver Data Sales <https://www.law360.com/cybersecurity-privacy/articles/2303511?nl_pk=fb10114…> By Allison Grande Arkansas' attorney general has become the latest to take aim at General Motors Co. over its data privacy practices, filing a lawsuit in state court Wednesday accusing the automaker of padding its profits by deceptively collecting and selling drivers' private data, which purchasers would then resell to insurance companies. Complaint attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/cybersecurity-privacy/articles/2303511?nl_pk=fb10114…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/cybersecurity-privacy/articles/2303511?nl_pk=fb10114…>

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Web Liability Fix Faces 'Persuasive' Test, FCC Expert Says
by Gunnar Larson 28 Feb '25

28 Feb '25

Web Liability Fix Faces 'Persuasive' Test, FCC Expert Says <https://www.law360.com/cybersecurity-privacy/articles/2303193?nl_pk=fb10114…> By Christopher Cole It won't be easy for the Federal Communications Commission to weaken tech platforms' liability shield as some Republicans want to do, but the commission could still make changes that courts find "persuasive," a former FCC lawyer now leading a pro-business group said on a blog Tuesday. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/cybersecurity-privacy/articles/2303193?nl_pk=fb10114…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/cybersecurity-privacy/articles/2303193?nl_pk=fb10114…>

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Ocelot Quantum Chip
by zeynep＠keemail.me 27 Feb '25

27 Feb '25

https://www.amazon.science/blog/amazon-announces-ocelot-quantum-chip Today we are happy to announce Ocelot, our first-generation quantum chip. Ocelot represents Amazon Web Services’ pioneering effort to develop, from the ground up, a hardware implementation of quantum error correction that is both resource efficient and scalable. Based on superconducting quantum circuits, Ocelot achieves the following major technical advances: The first realization of a scalable architecture for bosonic error correction, surpassing traditional qubit approaches to reducing error correction overhead; The first implementation of a noise-biased gate — a key to unlocking the type of hardware-efficient error correction necessary for building scalable, commercially viable quantum computers; State-of-the-art performance for superconducting qubits, with bit-flip times approaching one second in tandem with phase-flip times of 20 microseconds. We believe that scaling Ocelot to a full-fledged quantum computer capable of transformative societal impact would require as little as one-tenth as many resources as common approaches, helping bring closer the age of practical quantum computing. The quantum performance gap Quantum computers promise to perform some computations much faster — even exponentially faster — than classical computers. This means quantum computers can solve some problems that are forever beyond the reach of classical computing. Practical applications of quantum computing will require sophisticated quantum algorithms with billions of quantum gates — the basic operations of a quantum computer. But current quantum computers’ extreme sensitivity to environmental noise means that the best quantum hardware today can run only about a thousand gates without error. How do we bridge this gap? Quantum error correction: the key to reliable quantum computing Quantum error correction, first proposed theoretically in the 1990s, offers a solution. By sharing the information in each logicalqubit across multiple physical qubits, one can protect the information within a quantum computer from external noise. Not only this, but errors can be detected and corrected in a manner analogous to the classical error correction methods used in digital storage and communication. Recent experiments have demonstrated promising progress, but today’s best logical qubits, based on superconducting or atomic qubits, still exhibit error rates a billion times larger than the error rates needed for known quantum algorithms of practical utility and quantum advantage. The challenge of qubit overhead While quantum error correction provides a path to bridging the enormous chasm between today’s error rates and those required for practical quantum computation, it comes with a severe penalty in terms of resource overhead. Reducing logical-qubit error rates requires scaling up the redundancy in the number of physical qubits per logical qubit. Traditional quantum error correction methods, such as those using the surface error-correcting code, currently require thousands (and if we work really, really hard, maybe in the future, hundreds) of physical qubits per logical qubit to reach the desired error rates. That means that a commercially relevant quantum computer would require millions of physical qubits — many orders of magnitude beyond the qubit count of current hardware. One fundamental reason for this high overhead is that quantum systems experience two types of errors: bit-flip errors(also present in classical bits) and phase-flip errors (unique to qubits). Whereas classical bits require only correction of bit flips, qubits require an additional layer of redundancy to handle both types of errors. Although subtle, this added complexity leads to quantum systems’ large resource overhead requirement. For comparison, a good classical error-correcting code could realize the error rate we desire for quantum computing with less than 30% overhead, roughly one-ten-thousandth the overhead of the conventional surface code approach (assuming bit error rates of 0.5%, similar to qubit error rates in current hardware). Cat qubits: an approach to more efficient error correction Quantum systems in nature can be more complex than qubits, which consist of just two quantum states (usually labeled 0 and 1in analogy to classical digital bits). Take for example the simple harmonic oscillator, which oscillates with a well-defined frequency. Harmonic oscillators come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the mechanical metronome used to keep time while playing music to the microwave electromagnetic oscillators used in radar and communication systems. Classically, the state of an oscillator can be represented by the amplitude and phase of its oscillations. Quantum mechanically, the situation is similar, although the amplitude and phase are never simultaneously perfectly defined, and there is an underlying graininess to the amplitude associated with each quanta of energy one adds to the system. These quanta of energy are what are called bosonic particles, the best known of which is the photon, associated with the electromagnetic field. The more energy we pump into the system, the more bosons (photons) we create, and the more oscillator states (amplitudes) we can access. Bosonic quantum error correction, which relies on bosons instead of simple two-state qubit systems, uses these extra oscillator states to more effectively protect quantum information from environmental noise and to do more efficient error correction. One type of bosonic quantum error correction uses cat qubits, named after the dead/alive Schrödinger cat of Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought experiment. Cat qubits use the quantum superposition of classical-like states of well-defined amplitude and phase to encode a qubit’s worth of information. Just a few years after Peter Shor’s seminal 1995 paper on quantum error correction, researchers began quietly developing an alternative approach to error correction based on cat qubits. A major advantage of cat qubits is their inherent protection against bit-flip errors. Increasing the number of photons in the oscillator can make the rate of the bit-flip errors exponentially small. This means that instead of increasing qubit count, we can simply increase the energy of an oscillator, making error correction far more efficient. The past decade has seen pioneering experiments demonstrating the potential of cat qubits. However, these experiments have mostly focused on single-cat-qubit demonstrations, leaving open the question of whether cat qubits could be integrated into a scalable architecture. Ocelot: demonstrating the scalability of bosonic quantum error correction Today in Nature, we published the results of our measurements on Ocelot <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08642-7>, and its quantum error correction performance. Ocelot represents an important step on the road to practical quantum computers, leveraging chip-scale integration of cat qubits to form a scalable, hardware-efficient architecture for quantum error correction. In this approach, bit-flip errors are exponentially suppressed at the physical-qubit level; phase-flip errors are corrected using a repetition code, the simplest classical error-correcting code; and highly noise-biased controlled-NOT (C-NOT) gates, between each cat qubit and ancillary transmon qubits (the conventional qubit used in superconducting quantum circuits), enable phase-flip-error detection while preserving the cat’s bit-flip protection. The Ocelot logical-qubit memory chip, shown schematically above, consists of five cat data qubits, each housing an oscillator that is used to store the quantum data. The storage oscillator of each cat qubit is connected to two ancillary transmon qubits for phase-flip-error detection and paired with a special nonlinear buffer circuit used to stabilize the cat qubit states and exponentially suppress bit-flip errors. Tuning up the Ocelot device involves calibrating the bit- and phase-flip error rates of the cat qubits against the cat amplitude (average photon number) and optimizing the noise-bias of the C-NOT gate used for phase-flip-error detection. Our experimental results show that we can achieve bit-flip times approaching one second, more than a thousand times longer than the lifetime of conventional superconducting qubits. Critically, this can be accomplished with a cat amplitude as small as four photons, enabling us to retain phase-flip times of tens of microseconds, sufficient for quantum error correction. From there, we run a sequence of error correction cycles to test the performance of the circuit as a logical-qubit memory. In order to characterize the performance of the repetition code and the scalability of the architecture, we studied subsets of the Ocelot cat qubits, representing different repetition code lengths. The logical phase-flip error rate was seen to drop significantly when the code distance was increased from distance-3 to distance-5 (i.e., from a code with three cat qubits to one with five) across a wide range of cat photon numbers, indicating the effectiveness of the repetition code. When bit-flip errors were included, the totallogical error rate was measured to be 1.72% per cycle for the distance-3 code and 1.65% per cycle for the distance-5 code. The comparability of the total error rate of the distance-5 code to that of the shorter distance-3 code, with fewer cat qubits and opportunities for bit-flip errors, can be attributed to the large noise bias of the C-NOT gate and its effectiveness in suppressing bit-flip errors. This noise bias is what allows Ocelot to achieve a distance-5 code with less than a fifth as many qubits — five data qubits and four ancilla qubits, versus 49 qubits for a surface code device. What we scale matters From the billions of transistors in a modern GPU to the massive-scale GPU clusters powering AI models, the ability to scale efficiently is a key driver of technological progress. Similarly, scaling the number of qubits to accommodate the overhead required of quantum error correction will be key to realizing commercially valuable quantum computers. But the history of computing shows that scaling the right component can have massive consequences for cost, performance, and even feasibility. The computer revolution truly took off when the transistor replaced the vacuum tube as the fundamental building block to scale. Ocelot represents our first chip with the cat qubit architecture, and an initial test of its suitability as a fundamental building block for implementing quantum error correction. Future versions of Ocelot are being developed that will exponentially drive down logical error rates, enabled by both an improvement in component performance and an increase in code distance. Codes tailored to biased noise, such as the repetition code used in Ocelot, can significantly reduce the number of physical qubits required. In our forthcoming paper “Hybrid cat-transmon architecture for scalable, hardware-efficient quantum error correction <https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23363>”, we find that scaling Ocelot could reduce quantum error correction overhead by up to 90% compared to conventional surface code approaches with similar physical-qubit error rates. We believe that Ocelot's architecture, with its hardware-efficient approach to error correction, positions us well to tackle the next phase of quantum computing: learning how to scale. Using a hardware-efficient approach will allow us to more quickly and cost effectively achieve an error-corrected quantum computer that benefits society. Over the last few years, quantum computing has entered an exciting new era in which quantum error correction has moved from the blackboard to the test bench. With Ocelot, we are just beginning down a path to fault-tolerant quantum computation. For those interested in joining us on this journey, we are hiring for positions across our quantum computing stack. Visit Amazon Jobs <https://www.amazon.jobs/> and enter the keyword “quantum <https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?base_query=quantum&loc_query=>”.

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