Hell yes! I’d love to share some stuff.

One good example of a quantum computer is the Lukin group neutral atoms work. As the paper discusses, they managed to perform error correction procedures making 48 actual logical qubits and performing operations on them. Still not all that practically useful, but it exists, and is extremely impressive from a physics experiment viewpoint.

There are also plenty of meaningful reports on non-emulated machines from the corporate world. From the big players examples include the Willow chip from Google and Heron from IBM being actual real quantum devices doing actual (albeit basic) operations. Furthermore there are a plethora of smaller companies like OQC and Pasqal with real machines.

On applications, this review is both extensive and sober, outlining the known applications with speedups, costs and drawbacks. Among the most exciting are Fermi-Hubbard model dynamics (condensed matter stuff), which is predicted to have exponential speedup with relatively few resources. These all depend on a relatively narrow selection of tricks, though. Among interesting efforts to fundamentally expand what tricks are available is this work from the Babbush group.

Let me know if that’s not what you were looking for.

Indeed I did. They seem to be pointing to the fact that current machines are not factoring primes in any serious way.

Does this contradict my point?

Prime factorisation is indeed nobody’s primary idea of what a quantum computer will be useful for in practice any time soon, but it cannot be denied that Shor’s algorithm is the first and only method of prime factorisation we have discovered which can finish in realistic time with realistic resources.

And that means that RSA is no longer as safe as it once was, justifying the process of finding alternatives.

Quantum science is not fraudulent, incredible leaps are being made with the immense influx of funding.

Quantum industry is a different beast entirely, with scientific rigour being corrupted by stock price management.

It’s an objective fact that quantum computers indeed exist now, but only at a very basic prototype level. Don’t trust anything a journalist says about them, but they are real, and they are based on technology we had no idea if would ever be possible.

Except quantum computers do indeed exist right now, and did not in the 90’s. Sadly, the hype and corporate interests still make it difficult to tell truth from nonsense.