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If you say something even vaguely critical, or something that is even perceived as critical of the move to allow boys and girls to transition from one gender to the next, you run the risk of being suspended from social media, fired from your job or shunned by your friends. That can even happen if you are a respected United States senator at the confirmation hearing of a deputy secretary of health. Well get to that in a minute, so hold that thought.

I sometimes make jokes about the fact that people are now using personal pronouns in the way prior generations used hair color, tattoos and love beads: An effort to express ones identity. Th people who usually laugh at the jokes are the ones who understand that playing around with grammar to make yourself feel better about whoever it is you think you are is rather ridiculous. The ones who dont laugh are the kind of people who think that (1) a single person calling himself they is perfectly reasonable and (2) would absolutely let their adolescent daughter take hormones so she can become their adolescent son.

Have I been canceled yet? Are you still able to read this column? On the assumption that you can, lets move on to the respected U.S. senator.

Last week, Rand Paul questioned Pennsylvanias erstwhile Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine, about gender reassignment procedures for adolescents. We used to call it sex-change operation, but in this more enlightened age with experts who tell us that there are more than just two genders, we use the term gender reassignment. I suppose thats because we dont want to admit that anyone is really changing anything. Or, as some have said, God doesnt make mistakes, humans just mislabel.

Levine was appearing before a Senate committee on her nomination to be assistant health secretary in the Biden administration. Rand asked her a very pointed question about a fundamental trans issue, which is extremely fair since Biden has made a very big deal about nominating a trans woman for such an exalted federal office:

Do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing ones sex? Critics have pointed out that Sen. Paul used the wrong terminology since they would argue nothing is being changed, let alone sex. Remember, its gender, and its being reassigned. But even with that little clarification, there was no answer from Levine.

Then Paul asked, Do you support the governments intervening to override the parents consent to give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or amputation surgery of breasts and genitals?

Again, Levine did not answer the question, other than to politely suggest that she would be more than willing to meet with the senator if and when she were confirmed, so they could hash these things out after the fact.

Of course, the whole point of a confirmation hearing is to determine whether someone is even qualified to be in a position to hash these sort of things out, and it is incumbent upon the senative to advise and give consent on any nomination that requires the confirmation.

Rand Paul was destroyed in the media because of his blunt comments. The legacy print media went after him as a bigot, and the LGBTQ (hard to keep up, am I missing a letter?) and their cis/straight/single-pronouned allies went ballistic. How dare he question whether a 13-year-old is qualified to make such momentous, permanent decisions about their bodies! How dare he suggest that a kid who isnt yet old enough to drive a car is, however, able to determine whether he wants his penis or her breasts removed, or whether they should take drugs to block the onset of natural puberty?

I mean, who does he think he is, a doctor? (Actually, yes, he is. But lets not let the facts get in the way.)

This was not Marjorie Taylor Greene getting into a dust up with her colleague in the House, the one who planted a rainbow flag outside of her office to support her trans daughter.

This was not some Facebook commentary about there only being two genders or a Twitter hashtag like #BelieveTheScience.

This was a medical doctor using his expertise to help inform his obligations as an elected public official. This was a senator, stating the case that so many of us believe to be the truth but who are prevented from making, namely, that allowing adolescents to make these decisions is tantamount to child abuse.

There are numerous cases of children who were allowed by their parents to choose their identities and then dealt with the devastating consequences later in life. One of them was profiled in a National Review article. Keira Bell was a 14-year-old who read about transsexuals on the internet, convinced her parents to let her have surgery, had her breasts removed, and now at the age of 23 deeply regrets the move. In the piece written by Madeleine Kearns, she says: I made a brash decision as a teenager, as a lot of teenagers do, trying to find confidence and happiness, except now the rest of my life will be negatively affected.

You might say that each case is different, and that we shouldnt judge how someone decides to deal with complicated identity questions. But society does that all the time, when it comes to kids. We make laws that protect them from themselves, and we even limit the authority of parents in order to safeguard the welfare of minors. We also have laws that absolve minors from criminal liability. We erect walls between what they want, and what they need.

We do it because kids are not equipped to make these decisions, no matter what the experts in this new boutique area of gender science might say.

Thats not bigotry, my friends. Thats common sense.

Its troubling that Dr. Levine cant admit it.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a Delaware County resident. Her column appears Thursday and Sunday. Email her at cflowers1961@gmail.com.

Here is the original post:
Christine Flowers: We have to protect children from themselves - The Delaware County Daily Times

Trans activists, like Bidens pick as assistant health secretary, Rachel Levine, say schoolkids can choose to have puberty blockers and sex-change surgery. But confused children are too young to make such life-changing decisions.

We all know the mantra by now trans women are women, and trans men are men. Deep down we may know it to be nonsense, but unless we pay it lip service we risk being labelled as bigots or worse despicable people who question the very humanity of trans people, to use the language of theNew York Times.

Victims of this ideology include women, whose boundaries and spaces are being violated by male people who claim to feel like women, and trans women like me who had been getting on with our lives. Nobody consulted with me before social justice warriors made us their cause clbre. Depicted falsely as one of the most vulnerable groups on the planet, many of us are relatively privileged, only transitioning after our male bodies helped us secure our places in society.

But the biggest casualties in my view are children. Confused young people, perhaps struggling with identity and nascent sexuality, are being told that if they are unhappy with their sex, then they can change it, with potentially disastrous consequences on their bodies. Nevertheless, this has become a major industry. The US Human Rights Campaignlists no fewer than 57 clinical care programs for gender-expansive children and adolescents in the United States and Canada alone. Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and referrals for surgery are the go-to treatments.

Last week, Republican Senator Rand Paul decided he needed answers when Rachel Levine appeared before him. Levine is President Bidens nominee for assistant secretary of health and, like me, transitioned in mid-life after fathering children. One would expect, therefore, that Levine would be aware of the issues and dangers facing transgender-identifying children. Even so, Pauls question could not be clearer:

Dr. Levine, do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life changing decision as changing ones sex?

Levines attempt at obfuscation appeared to rely on a prepared text, Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field, with robust research and standards of care that have been developed. After Paul explained his question, the exchange descended into farce when Levine again refused to answer and repeated word-for-word, Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field... Paul was unimpressed at Levines reticence and noted, the witness refused to answer the question.

The video clip of the exchange encapsulates the dire state of what should be a serious political debate about the medicalisation of children:

Equally remarkable was Senator Patty Murrays response to the episode. Murray praised Levines thoughtful and medically informed responses, and even appeared to suggest that Levine had not been treated with respect.

In his questioning, Paul cited the case of Keira Bell, a British woman who had been prescribed hormone therapy as a teenager. Now aged 23, she regrets it. Recently, she brought a case to the High Court of England and Wales against her erstwhile clinic. She claimed that she had been too young to give consent. I am relieved that the courtagreed with her. Throughout childhood, I struggled with gender dysphoria and had gender affirming treatment been available to children in the 1980s I would have clamoured for it. But at best it is a palliative solution; had I taken it in my teens, I would never have had children of my own.

Following the Bell judgment, public health clinics in England and Wales can no longer prescribe puberty blocking drugs to children without the permission of a court, to protect young people from the folly of their own immaturity. But even so, children are not safe. Where there is money to be made, unscrupulous practitioners will look for openings.

On Saturday, we learned thatGender GP an online clinic working with children in the UK was prepared to use a legal loophole to supply testosterone, a class 3 controlled drug, to someone they thought was a 15-year-old girl. She was actually an undercover reporter at the Daily Telegraph. But Gender GP did not know that, having never actually met their patient, let alone examined them, and had never spoken to her parents.

Campaigning group forwomen.scot described it as a shocking dereliction of medical care.

Pictured in the featured image is Marianne Oakes, the lead counsellor at Gender GP, and a transwoman.Personaltestimony on the Gender GP website suggests that Oakes transitioned recently, having first been referred for treatment in September 2015, three months after qualifying as a therapeutic counsellor, with a view to realising my dream of working as a female therapist.

Oakes told the 15-year-old girl/Telegraph reporter that they did not require her parents permission. Staff accepted at face value the reporters stated belief that she was really male, telling her were not worried about your truth because theres no debate about that.

The Telegraph went on toreport that,

[The Prescription] was signed by a doctor in Romania, who the Telegraph has identified as a geriatrician also trained in administering Botox. GenderGP does not offer patients the chance of an appointment with her, even though she authorises the medication. Instead, they are directed to a doctor in Egypt, who told the reporter that it was excellent that, aged 15, she knew she never wanted to have children.

Appallingly, British children continue to access cross sex hormones, despite the Keira Bell judgment that they cannot even consent to puberty blockers.

Vulnerable children are being put at risk. The adults involved need to be called to account, transgender adults included. We may have first-hand experience of gender dysphoria, but we have no more idea than anyone else what it might feel like to be a member of the opposite sex. Nor can adult transitioners like Levine, Oakes or me, indeed ever really empathise with children who are being forced into life changing decisions about their future fertility before they know what it means to be an adult.

I never thought I would agree with a right-winger like Rand Paul. I started out as a socialist and I think I am still a socialist, but however wide the political gulf between us, it is transcended by something far more important the safeguarding of children.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Continued here:
As a socialist and a trans woman, I never thought Id agree with Rand Paul. But on this issue of protecting children, hes right - RT

We have done some work with the NCSC but they just do not have the budget to fund this kind of development, he says.

His fear is that the UK could experience a brain drain of cryptography talent to other countries like Canada and France that have allocated more government funding to the field.

In January, the French government announced 150m (130m) in funding for quantum safe encryption as part of a larger 1.8bn grant for quantum computing.

Insiders with links to the security services say that the Government is carrying out its own secret work on quantum safe encryption instead of relying on start-ups.

Dr Ian Levy, the technical director of the NCSC, says the organisation "continues to work closely with industry, academia and international partners" on the subject. "The NCSC is committed to ensuring the UK is well-prepared for quantum-safe cryptography," he adds.

The threat of quantum computing breaking encryption could be solved within months, however. Many organisations, including PQShield and Post-Quantum have been taking part in a global competition run by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The contest, announced in 2016, is nearing completion. Early next year, NIST will announce the new standard for quantum safe encryption, essentially replacing RSA. It will change the world not for the next decade, but for the next 40 or 50 years, Cheng says.

If everything goes smoothly, in several years the encryption keeping secrets safe will be quietly swapped out so that quantum computers cannot easily crack messages.

I think the answer to the threat should be transparent for users. They should have basically the same experience they have today. They shouldn't have to install some new bit of kit, says Alan Woodward, a computer security expert and visiting professor at the University of Surrey.

But while NISTs competition is nearing its end, theres a rival scheme that has already been launched around the world.

Telecom businesses such as BT have spent millions of pounds creating specialist networks that use a system called quantum key distribution. It uses a stream of single photos to transfer the secret encryption keys used to decrypt data securely.

Instead of a new encryption algorithm, this scheme relies on kilometres of fibre optic cables to transfer keys and has been the favoured choice of physicists who prefer its reliance on photons rather than mathematics.

See the article here:
Inside the race to keep secrets safe from the quantum computing revolution - Telegraph.co.uk

John Martinis, the lead scientist who built Googles first computer to achieve quantum supremacy, recently left the tech giant to join Silicon Quantum Computing, a 2017-founded startup based in Sydney.

Meanwhile Terra Quantum, a Swiss-based quantum computing startup, has celebrated another big hire with high-profile physicist Valerii Vinokur from the Argonne National Laboratory in the US.

There is a trend for academics going to startups now, and it is a good sign when the seasoned professionals start joining.

Both moves are a sign that smaller startups are able to compete with the big players in the brewing war for talent in the quantum sector, as the industry begins to get out of the lab towards commercial applications.

Markus Pflitsch, cofounder Terra Quantum, says that big shot professors joining startups is a sign that smaller quantum companies are being taken increasingly seriously. He adds that the field is so new that new companies may well be just as successful as the likes of IBM, Google and Microsoft.

There is a trend for academics going to startups now, and it is a good sign when the seasoned professionals start joining, says Pflitsch.

Competition is fierce though.

European governments recent moves to pour funding into quantum projects (France recently pledged to spend 1.8bn in the sector and Germany 2bn) is partly motivated by a desire to avoid leading academics from the region, says Christophe Jurczak, founder of Quantonation.

The French government feels very strongly that the country is suffering from a brain drain in the field of AI, and they dont want that to happen with quantum while there is more time to prepare, says Jurczak, who was instrumental in helping formulate the French plan.

Quantum computing companies are raising ever-larger funding rounds and using the money for hiring.

Riverlane, a Cambridge-based startup which raised a 14.6m last month, is looking to double its team of 26 this year. Cambridge Quantum Computing, which raised a $45m early VC round in December, has gone from 37 employees in 2018 to close to 90 now and is hiring for 30+ more roles. Finnish superconducting quantum computer maker IQM, which raised a 39m Series A round in November, has more than doubled its headcount in the last year.

The shortage in the industry is no longer the money, it is the brainpower, says Pflitsch, who now has a staff of around 80 at Terra Quantum. The talent is so important, we cant do it without these guys. If you have those brains at Google or Terra Quantum it doesnt matter, it is a fair battle.

Big advances are still happening at relatively unknown teams at labs all around the world. In December a group based at the University of Science and Technology of China demonstrated quantum superiority the Holy Grail of the sector by getting a photon-based quantum system to do in 20 seconds what would take a supercomputer 600m years. The demonstration outdid Googles 2018 demonstration of quantum superiority by several orders of magnitude.

Small companies can compete in quantum if they have a breakthrough.

If a lab can do that it shows that small companies can compete in quantum if they have a breakthrough, says Daniel Carew, principal at IQ Capital.

French photonics-based quantum company Pasqal is thought to have achieved a record in the simulation of quantum systems with 196 qubits in the lab. If confirmed, this would give Europe a quantum advantage.

With so much still undeveloped, the quantum computing world still has an amateur enthusiast flavour to it with big developments able to come from unexpected places, much like the early days of the personal computer in the 1970s.

Its a bit like the homebrew computer club, says Steve Brierley, chief executive of Riverlane, referencing the early hobbyist computer club that ran in a garage in Californias Menlo Park between 1975 and 1986, and which became the training ground for tech entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Theres a lot of tinkering. Its happening over the cloud rather than in someones shed, but there is that same excitement.

It is still not clear which kind of quantum computing will be the dominant technology. Many of the big bets are on superconducting quantum computers, which operate at temperatures close to absolute zero, but there is investment going into photon-based systems, where photons are bounced into a quantum state by a series of mirrors, systems using trapped ions and silicon-based systems which dont have to operate at quite the super-low temperatures of the superconducting systems.

Researchers from Microsoft and the University of Sydney recently announced they had developed a quantum computing system that uses the same kind of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chips already used in classic computing.

If they have baked the wrong technology, some companies may disappear overnight.

It is still early days of knowing which style of quantum will prevail, says Pflitsch. If they have baked the wrong technology, he says, some companies may disappear overnight

Much of the big investment so far has gone into superconducting qubits, in part because the refrigeration technology needed for this is more established and available. But if there are big breakthroughs in one of the other areas which would make the qubits more reliable or scalable this could become the dominant technology.

I think atoms and ions will be dominant first, they have many advantages as for scalability (atoms) and fidelity (ions). In the longer term, solid-state approaches (superconducting qubits, spins, photons) should catch up, says Christophe Jurczak, founder of Quantonation, the quantum-focused VC fund.

It is also entirely possible that we could end up with multiple types of quantum computer co-existing, each with a particular niche it is best suited for.

The big dream of a general quantum computer may not be what happens, says IQ Capitals Carew. It may be more like the early days of microprocessors where you had a lot of different types each with a specific function.

This is part one of a series of four articles we are running this week on Europes quantum computing industry. Part two, on Frances quantum strategy, will be published tomorrow.

See the article here:
Why now is the right time to invest in European quantum computing - Sifted

Google and D-Wave Systems say theyve achieved a new milestone in the world of quantum computing.

In a press release, D-Wave says its quantum device has far outpaced a classical computer in a direct competition to complete a difficult computational problem.

The device successfully modeled the behavior of a spinning two-dimensional quantum magnet, and was able to complete the simulation at breakneck speed.

In collaboration with scientists at Google, demonstrating a computational performance advantage, increasing with both simulation size and problem hardness, to over 3 million times that of corresponding classical methods.

Notably, this work was achieved on a practical application with real-world implications, simulating the topological phenomena behind the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Quantum devices leverage the unique properties of quantum physics to perform certain calculations at revolutionary speeds.

D-Wave says its study proves that quantum computers can more efficiently and effectively tackle tough simulations.

What we see is a huge benefit in absolute terms, with the scaling advantage in temperature and size that we would hope for.

Quantum computing threatens to break the cryptographic algorithms that keep the internet and crypto assets secure. Ripple CTO Davis Schwartz, says he believes developers have about eight years to develop quantum-proof methods to keep digital infrastructures secure.

Featured Image: Shutterstock/Yurchanka Siarhei

See the article here:
Google Teams With D-Wave in Massive Quantum Computing Leap, Cracking Simulation Problem - The Daily Hodl