D-Wave today launched its next-generation quantum computing platform available via its Leap quantum cloud service. The company calls Advantage “the first quantum computer built for business.” In that vein, D-Wave today also debuted Launch, a jump-start program for businesses that want to begin building hybrid quantum applications. From a report: “The Advantage quantum computer is the first quantum computer designed and developed from the ground up to support business applications,” D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz told VentureBeat. “We engineered it to be able to deal with large, complex commercial applications and to be able to support the running of those applications in production environments. There is no other quantum computer anywhere in the world that can solve problems at the scale and complexity that this quantum computer can solve problems. It really is the only one that you can run real business applications on. The other quantum computers are primarily prototypes. You can do experimentation, run small proofs of concept, but none of them can support applications at the scale that we can.” Quantum computing leverages qubits (unlike bits that can only be in a state of 0 or 1, qubits can also be in a superposition of the two) to perform computations that would be much more difficult, or simply not feasible, for a classical computer. Based in Burnaby, Canada, D-Wave was the first company to sell commercial quantum computers, which are built to use quantum annealing. But D-Wave doesn’t sell quantum computers anymore. Advantage and its over 5,000 qubits (up from 2,000 in the company’s 2000Q system) are only available via the cloud. (That means through Leap or a partner like Amazon Braket.)

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Source: Slashdot – D-Wave’s 5,000-Qubit Quantum Computing Platform Handles 1 Million Variables

Amnesty International says it has been forced to halt its India operations due to “reprisals” from the government. From a report: The watchdog also accused the government of pursuing a “witch-hunt” against human rights organisations. Amnesty said its bank accounts had been frozen and it had been forced to lay off staff in the country and suspend all its campaign and research work. India’s government said in a statement that the accusations were “unfortunate, exaggerated and far from the truth.” Rajat Khosla, Amnesty’s senior director of research, advocacy and policy, told the BBC: “We are facing a rather unprecedented situation in India. Amnesty International India has been facing an onslaught of attacks, bullying and harassment by the government in a very systematic manner. “This is all down to the human rights work that we were doing and the government not wanting to answer questions we raised, whether it’s in terms of our investigations into the Delhi riots, or the silencing of voices in Jammu and Kashmir.”

In a report released last month, the group said police in the Indian capital, Delhi, committed human rights violations during deadly religious riots between Hindus and Muslims in February. Rebutting the claims, the Delhi police told The Hindu newspaper that Amnesty’s report was “lopsided, biased and malicious.” Earlier in August, on the first anniversary of the revocation of Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status, Amnesty had called for the release of all detained political leaders, activists and journalists, and for the resumption of high-speed internet services in the region. In 2019, the watchdog testified before the US Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing on human rights in South Asia, where it highlighted its findings on arbitrary detentions, and the use of excessive force and torture in Kashmir.

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Source: Slashdot – Amnesty International To Halt India Operations