Geek News

Like every other major tech company, Google has designs on being the first to achieve quantum supremacy -- the point where a quantum computer could run particular algorithms faster than a classical computer. Today it's announced that it believes its latest research, Bristlecone, is going to be the processor to help it achieve that. According to the Google Quantum AI Lab, it could provide "a compelling proof-of-principle for building larger scale quantum computers." One of the biggest obstacles to quantum supremacy is error rates and subsequent scalability. Qubits (the quantum version of traditional bits) are very unstable and can be adversely affected by noise, and most of these systems can only hold a state for less than 100 microseconds. Google believes that quantum supremacy can be "comfortably demonstrated" with 49 qubits and a two-qubit error below 0.5 percent. Previous quantum systems by Google have given two-qubit errors of 0.6 percent, which in theor...

If you're a hardcore Pokemon Go trainer with an old phone, it might be time for an upgrade. Niantic has announced its plans to drop support for iOS devices that can't be updated to iOS 11, so phones released in or before 2013 (that's the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C) aren't going to work with the game anymore. Niantic has been steadfastly making improvements to Pokemon Go since its launch in July 2016, switching up gameplay rules for a better player experience, adding features such as dynamic weather and pushing for more hardware specific features in its AR component. So it makes sense that if it wants to keep driving the game forward it'll have to cut loose some dead weight. There's no word yet on a similar move for Android users -- perhaps Niantic is testing the waters to see how this cull affects its user base. Support will be removed via an update rolling out on February 28, so upgrade now if you want to keep catching 'em all. Source: Niantic via En...