A peer-reviewed Nature critique argues that Microsoft’s 2025 Majorana quantum-computing breakthrough – and its claim that it could enable “a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years” – is fundamentally flawed. According to Dr Henry Legg, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, the claims were undermined by omitted data, selective plotting, and basic Python errors that concealed alternative results. Microsoft, for its part, says the bugs were minor and stands by its findings and roadmap.


“Boffin” made me think the slashdot post is about a post at The Register, and sure enough, it is.
I just assumed that was someone’s name. I had never heard that term before.
No, it’s a British term The Register uses a lot. From Wikipedia: