Reading the article about how they filtered and cherry-picked specific regions, I got curious about the actual asymmetry computation, so I looked up the source code. Looking at it, they seem to have used memory offsets as if they were physical coordinates, but they're only looking at the array index order, not the actual values. x[::-1] isn't measuring physical coordinates; it's just reversing the array. So it seems this bias axis mentioned in the article only forms when things are symmetric. But in typical numerical computations, isn't it pretty common to reverse arrays like this? In this case, there must be a reason why the physical coordinates change. Should we be verifying invariants here? Sometimes I see people who find these kinds of issues and I think they're really amazing. Even after reading the article, tracing it, and debugging it, I kept wondering what the problem was..
simonw 3 minutes ago [-]
On Hacker News you can indent code samples with two spaces, like this:
Was pleasantly surprised to see the exact bug in here, in a "The Register" article of all places. Legg showed that fixing the bug invalidates the research. Seems Microsoft is responding to a clear problem with a vague dismissal.
Edit: Oh, The Register is a true tech paper, guess the name makes sense for that. Got mixed up cause there are a bunch of general papers called something Register.
dekhn 59 minutes ago [-]
The Register is a tech paper that is modelled on various British tabloids (daily mail, the sun). Sometimes it's humor, sometimes it's real news and occasionally they even break a new story.
rtkwe 10 minutes ago [-]
I always find it hard to remember which of the British publications are real and which are pure trash. Usually they reveal it pretty quickly with the writing though.
frollogaston 56 minutes ago [-]
Haha, they got me. Was mostly thinking "The Daily Register" which doesn't exist, but Daily Mail does.
Isamu 26 minutes ago [-]
When I see “boffin” in a title I think “The Register” so kudos I guess.
mjhay 1 hours ago [-]
You’d really think they’d really check everything and cross their t’s after their previous issues in marjorana fermion QC. I generally have a very high opinion of MS research, but this is getting a bit embarrassing.
rvba 28 minutes ago [-]
Looks that the next step of this "project" is selecting a patsy and blaming all on that one sacrificial person
Ifkaluva 14 minutes ago [-]
I guess the thing to do is see who wrote the critical code segment… oh wait, it was AI, lol
gadders 2 hours ago [-]
Love the word "boffin". I think we should use "pundit" more often as well.
42 minutes ago [-]
Anthony-G 2 hours ago [-]
As soon as I saw this word, I guessed that El Reg was the source.
happytoexplain 1 hours ago [-]
I was surprised to see it - I thought "boffin" was good-natured but highly irreverent, like "nerd". But I can't imagine any publication writing the headline, "Computer nerd claims Microsoft's supposed quantum leap does not compute."
wiml 1 hours ago [-]
"Good natured but highly irreverent" is pretty much The Register's house style.
gh02t 30 minutes ago [-]
To be fair, "boffin" usually implies someone has relevant (usually scientific) expertise, but nerd doesn't. Henry Legg has the relevant credentials to give weight to his claims, he's not just some random basement nerd.
SAI_Peregrinus 1 hours ago [-]
The Register is highly irreverent, as a rule.
cpncrunch 1 hours ago [-]
It's typical of the Register. They always use the word "boffin" for expert/scientist. It's a british word used to describe a clever person.
MobiusHorizons 54 minutes ago [-]
Roughly interchangeable with egg head I think, although more used and slightly more endearing.
sensanaty 1 hours ago [-]
Completely unrelated but I'm always sad that Umbra, Penumbra and Equinox aren't used very often in day-to-day speech, very cool sounding words.
devin 22 minutes ago [-]
Also, adumbrate.
rdtsc 1 hours ago [-]
> boffins willing to go on the record as describing Microsoft's work as "unreliable" and perhaps even "fraudulent."
> Microsoft insisted its work is sound and in early June 2026 announced Majorana 2, a "next-generation topological quantum chip" it developed with the help of its own agentic AI.
AI hallucinates quantum computing bullshit as well or better than humans can hallucinate quantum computing bullshit. Couldn't have a better combination of technologies helping each other out.
frollogaston 1 hours ago [-]
The kinds of bugs really look like human mistakes more than AI
ck2 17 minutes ago [-]
Majorana fermion and Ettore Majorana are fascinating
Is it premature to assume it's due to AI Microslop?
teshier-A 15 minutes ago [-]
Unless if you list AI as a co-author, people are still responsible for the code they ship. Whatever tool was used to write said code
smartformulapro 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
frollogaston 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think research papers normally come with a simple portable way for others to rerun the calculations. At some point the code is complicated enough to be impossible to just proofread without running it.
TaupeRanger 1 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure you responded to an AI bot, looking at their comment history.
fennecbutt 1 hours ago [-]
And the structure of their sentences, unless they're doing that on purpose for some reason
frollogaston 1 hours ago [-]
Ok I don't normally call "bot" but yes it is. "It's not a sentence – it's a DSL"
brumbelow 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah I would say that the 'some point' is frontier quantum research. Which makes it even more confusing as to how something like this is not caught.
m4gr4th34 1 hours ago [-]
I actually have been fiddling with something like this. Self publishing on GitHub, numbers that are run in real time. If code can be open-sourced, I think research can start to be. I started using linux in 2019, and honestly, though I don't use it now (windows-turned-mac man, sigh), open source is a solid concept.
jMyles 1 hours ago [-]
> I don't think research papers normally come with a simple portable way for others to rerun the calculations.
...which, for situations where a readable/narrated test suite is entirely possible, is awful.
m4gr4th34 1 hours ago [-]
I actually created a template to make research dossiers to do exactly that on GitHub. it works, and self hosts, and has a DOI, and blockchain timestamps... I'm a quantum physicist that left academia cause it was too slow for my taste, and I think the technology is here now for open-sourcing science research.
frollogaston 1 hours ago [-]
Research code is stereotypically awful
Rendered at 17:32:59 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
```
return xr.apply_ufunc(
) ```Reading the article about how they filtered and cherry-picked specific regions, I got curious about the actual asymmetry computation, so I looked up the source code. Looking at it, they seem to have used memory offsets as if they were physical coordinates, but they're only looking at the array index order, not the actual values. x[::-1] isn't measuring physical coordinates; it's just reversing the array. So it seems this bias axis mentioned in the article only forms when things are symmetric. But in typical numerical computations, isn't it pretty common to reverse arrays like this? In this case, there must be a reason why the physical coordinates change. Should we be verifying invariants here? Sometimes I see people who find these kinds of issues and I think they're really amazing. Even after reading the article, tracing it, and debugging it, I kept wondering what the problem was..
Edit: Oh, The Register is a true tech paper, guess the name makes sense for that. Got mixed up cause there are a bunch of general papers called something Register.
> Microsoft insisted its work is sound and in early June 2026 announced Majorana 2, a "next-generation topological quantum chip" it developed with the help of its own agentic AI.
AI hallucinates quantum computing bullshit as well or better than humans can hallucinate quantum computing bullshit. Couldn't have a better combination of technologies helping each other out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorana_fermion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana
...which, for situations where a readable/narrated test suite is entirely possible, is awful.