[greenmountin]

People keep referring to Scott Aaronson like he changed his mind, and it's pretty clear he didn't. He just didn't want to be the Chief Naysayer anymore; he has more important things to do and frankly that shouldn't be his calling card.

I think the only part of "general-purpose quantum computer" D-Wave can claim is the "computer" part. They have not proven that any part of their annealing is "quantum". They have pretty epic lithography/fabrication skills, and are barreling ahead without any regard for coherence. They also have just an insane number of control lines, so there's some innovation there.

But their net worth becomes negative if you count the bad press for quantum computing in having a charlatan claim they have 1024 qubits and are "500,000" times faster at solving Sudoku. Other fields are having this PR problem too, where even careful program reviews are getting brutalized by the PR news cycle (see recent dark-matter experiment: http://profmattstrassler.com/2013/04/03/ams-presents-some-fi... -- forgive the typography)