I mean, the number of logical qubits has gone from basically zero not too long ago to what it is now. The whole error correction thing has really only taken off in the past ~5 years. That Microsoft computer you mentioned that got 4 logical qubits out of 30 physical qubits represents a 3-fold increase over the apparently previous best of 12 logical qubits to 288 physical ones (published earlier the same year), which undoubtedly was a big improvement over whatever they had before.

And then the question is FOR WHAT? Dead people cant make use of quantum computers and dead people is what we will be if we dont figure out solutions to some much more imminent, catastrophic problems in the next 10 years.

Strange thing to say. There’s enough people on the planet to work on more than one problem at a time. Useful quantum computing will probably help solve many problems in the future too.

Even if it’s 8 physical qubits to 1 logical qubit, 6100 qubits would get you 762 logical cubits.

All I’m saying is that the technology seems to be on a trajectory of the number of qubits improving by an order of magnitude every few years, and as such it’s plausible that in another 5-10 years it could have the necessary thousands of logical qubits to start doing useful computations. Mere 5 years ago the most physical qubits in a quantum computer was still measured in the tens rather than the hundreds, and 10 years ago I’m pretty sure they hadn’t even broken ten.

We can only hope that Bitcoin gets pwned by quantum computers. It would be absolutely glorious.

There was a paper recently about a stable 6100-qubit system, so the trajectory is plausible. If 1399 qubits is needed for 2048-bit Shor’s, this would already meet that by a wide margin – though obviously this is a research system that AFAIK cannot do actual computations.

https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/quantum-record-smashed-as-scientists-build-mammoth-6-000-qubit-system-and-it-works-at-room-temperature

That subtitle isn’t real