IBM and AOS, - a Colombian company specializing in providing business solutions- today announced they are collaborating to create a solution to enhance efficiency in the logistics and transport industry throughout the country, built on IBM Blockchain and Watson IoT on the IBM Cloud.

Pets at Home, the UK’s leading pet specialist retailer and IBM today announced the launch of Sales Assist, an IBM MobileFirst for iOS app for iPad which will be used across 440 stores nationwide to make it easier and simpler for customers to purchase the products they need.

Today IBM and Eurobank announced the first cloud-based digital platform for online international commercial trading. Using IBM's industry-leading Digital Experience software, with advanced cloud capabilities and social offerings, Eurobank is uniting exporters and importers from around the globe to enhance international trade operations and increase transactions.

IBM Watson Health and Tiatros Inc, a digital health company, today announced that the Tiatros-enabled post-traumatic stress disorder programs achieved up to 73% completion rate for veterans who begin the PTSD sessions. The Tiatros Post Traumatic Growth for Veterans is a Tiatros psychotherapy program designed as a secure social network to support veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The program connects veterans with their peers online, in a platform that is designed to reduce barriers to access and deliver evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy that is personalized to each individual, with help from Watson APIs.

IBM announced today that Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) has integrated IBM Watson Analytics to help create new services and programs based on data-driven insights to improve students’ academic achievement and development.

[Image: Diamond nanowires produced by physicist William Gilpin, used only for the purpose of illustration.] As part of some early prep, just putting notes together for a workshop I’ll be leading in Moscow later this summer, I thought I’d link back to this 2014 post by Paul Gilster on Centauri Dreams about “SETI at the … Continue reading "Synthetic at Every Scale"

[Image: “Two images of the same room, one reconstructed from video footage of a bag of chips within the room (top) and the other photographed directly (bottom),” as described by Scientific American. Images courtesy Jeong Joon Park.] “Researchers have now found that by filming a brief video clip of a shiny item, they can use … Continue reading "Every Reflection A Leak"

China Construction Bank (Asia) Corporation Limited (“CCB (Asia)”) and IBM today announced the development of the first blockchain-enabled bancassurance project in Hong Kong. Built on the IBM Blockchain Platform, the solution is designed to streamline CCB (Asia)’s bancassurance process and greatly enhance customer experience and the quality of services delivered through faster transaction processing time and increased transparency.

IBM Japan today announced that Sony Corporation and Sony Global Education, a subsidiary of Sony that works to provide global educational services, have developed a new blockchain-based student education records platform. With the solution, school administrators can consolidate and manage students' educational data from several schools, as well as record and refer their learning history and digital academic transcripts with more certainty. The new platform, developed using IBM Blockchain, uses blockchain technology running on the IBM Cloud to track students’ learning progress, as well as establish transparency and accountability of scholastic achievements between students and schools.

IBM anunció hoy que un 40% de los principales bancos e instituciones financieras en el país cuentan con protección de fraudes en línea que se sustentan en la solución Trusteer de IBM, con la cual la seguridad de los clientes está respaldada al realizar transacciones electrónicas.

IBM ha revelado IBM 5 en 5: las 5 innovaciones científicas y tecnológicas que en los próximos 5 años tendrán un gran impacto en la manera que funciona el mundo. Todas ellas suponen una importante evolución en computación como nunca antes se había visto.

Un nuevo estudio de IBM pone en entredicho algunas de las creencias que se tienen acerca de la generación del Milenio. Según el estudio elaborado por la Compañía, los nacidos en la Era Digital no son “ni perezosos, ni egoístas, ni superficiales” y aconseja a las empresas detenerse a conocer qué motiva a cada empleado para poder así maximizar sus cualidades únicas.

Today IBM unveiled the seventh annual IBM 5 in 5 – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.

IBM Security dio a conocer los resultados de su informe 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, cuyas conclusiones revelan que el número de registros comprometidos se ha incrementado un 566% en 2016, pasando de 600 millones a más de 4.000 millones. Estas filtraciones incluyen datos en los que los ciberdelincuentes tradicionalmente han puesto foco como tarjetas de crédito, contraseñas e información personal médica; sin embargo se hace notar un cambio en las estrategias de los ciberdelincuentes. En 2016, numerosas brechas de seguridad estaban relacionadas con datos no estructurados como archivos de email, documentos empresariales, de propiedad intelectual y códigos fuente.

ANZ and IBM are working together to develop a blockchain solution for the insurance industry that will help make the data transfer and payment reconciliation process faster and more transparent between brokers and insurers.

BNZ, one of the country’s leading banks announces it has selected IBM to deliver cross-channel fraud prevention to its customers. The multi-million dollar deal will support BNZ’s aim to provide its customers the ability to bank securely while delivering a positive customer experience.

Declares Intent to Break the Exaflop Barrier; Develops Exascale Research Collaboratory in Dublin

IBM announced that New Zealand-based application developer and emergency network provider, CLOUD M, has migrated its emergency alert tools and system to IBM Cloud for greater reliability and performance.

IBM Poland and WINUEL SA (subsidiary of Sygnity Group), today announced the first Polish Smart Metering software package to enable intelligent electricity use in more than 15 million households in Poland. The solution was developed jointly with the IBM Software Laboratory in Krakow.

Today IBM formally unveiled the fifth annual "Next Five in Five" – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years: • You'll beam up your friends in 3-D • Batteries will breathe air to power our devices • You won’t need to be a scientist to save the planet • Your commute will be personalized • Computers will help energize your city

Melbourne-based start-up Level35 is using Watson, the cognitive computing platform developed by IBM (NYSE: IBM), and IBM Cloud to help public-sector project managers improve how they communicate within some of the largest government agencies in Australia.

Country Energy, manager of Australia's largest power network, today announced a global collaboration with IBM (NYSE: IBM) aimed at developing and deploying an Intelligent Network in Australia.

Study Reveals Australian Office Workers Stressed by Irrelevant Email Overload

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Cúram Software announced today the successful implementation of a number of software solutions for WorkCoverSA to support their business. WorkCover selected IBM Global Business Services to implement the Cúram for Workers' Compensation Solution, a comprehensive and proven claims management solution that manages and automates the complete claim lifecycle from injury to outcome, as part of a comprehensive modernisation of their IT systems.

Woodside Energy and IBM will work together to re-imagine the way work is done using next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to help Woodside realise its vision of an “intelligent plant”.

Glimpses through Ginny Weasley's mind during the last months of her fifth years at Hogwarts. Missing scenes from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Cover reveal!!! So excited to be part of this Star Wars anthology!

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS -- STORIES OF LIGHT AND DARK comes out on August 25th and features eleven stories retelling the best episodes from The Clone Wars, each story told by a different author and each focused on a different character.  My character is the awesome Ahsoka Tano, and I wrote her story from the point-of-view of Jedi youngling Katooni.

Loved writing this so much!  Also loved the excuse to rewatch the series!

http://www.theforce.net/v3-story/frontFirst_Look_At_Star_Wars_The_Clone_Wars_%E2%80%93_Stories_Of_Light_and_Dark_186760.asp

My week has been stressful. They called Thursday and offered me the half-time job. They needed to know that day -- we haven't heard back on the lucrative job James has applied for, so I declined, citing the fact that I'm the only breadwinner and James hasn't heard back about the job he was waiting to hear from (I didn't mention to the HR person that it's a job at my same employer, because it's probably not her fault they're lagging on his job, and I'm not an asshole). She wanted to know when I'd know, and I said, "Well, I was supposed to know two weeks ago, so I mean, soon, I hope, but no guarantees."

She called me back an hour later and offered to give me a week to decide (because they actually don't want the other two people who interviewed, is my surmise), so yeah, rollercoaster day on Thursday.

And then a student's mom called and cussed me out for like half an hour. I don't take that stuff personally, but it does wear on me. My co-workers marvelled over and over about how calm I stayed, and I said (and I meant it), "She was frustrated. That's understandable. And I don't have to attend every fight I'm invited to," which became a theme for the week.

My mom got in a fracas with another member of her senior center, and I shared my week's theme with her. I think she felt a little chastised, but she also seemed to latch onto the theme as a potential sanity saver.

And then today at the donut shop, I accidentally passed up another person who was waiting to pay (because I followed the person who gave me our donuts to the register and didn't notice the other person who was standing away from the registers at the window. She berated me for many minutes about how rude I was, and how I should give a bitch some space, and how in America, we call this White Privilege, and and and... I just apologized, didn't engage beyond that, (felt frankly detached and mildly amused -- not sure what that says about me) and then once she'd left, the cashier apologized to me for the customer.

Me: "Nah, she's not wrong. I didn't see her, but I did cut in front of her."

I mean, I don't like being yelled at, or having people behave in ways that I perceive as rude towards me, but I'm not gonna fault someone for standing up for their space when I've violated it, so long as they're not hitting me or something. Not a fight I need to get into; not a hill I'm gonna die on.

So yeah, stressful week for many reasons, but not something that's gonna ruin my Saturday, which will now be completed by spending many many many hours writing and catching up on webcomics.

And how are YOU, dear ones?

comments

Mondo Duplantis of Sweden and Renaud Lavillenie of France tied for the gold medal Sunday during a men's pole vault competition held in their own backyards.

Posted by: iamrman

I had the idea of crossing over the New Mutants with Dungeons and Dragons. The classes I have assigned to various characters don't necessarily correspond to canon D&D classes, so die hard fans will probably hate it.

( Read more... )

In my team's morning standup[1] today, my boss asked us for our "most ridiculous / useless achievement" of the weekend. He offered as his, that he and his wife had looked at their growing stack of papers for shredding, and had a bonfire of them instead.

Another colleague offered up fitting one of those little metal keyhole covers on his front door, and I said that I'd finished the paté in the fridge no-one else was eating before it went off.

What are your tiny achievements of the week?


[1] which is of course actually conducted these days sitting down in our respective homes ...

comments

So like most other Jews I took part in virtual seders this year. It was very emotional and mostly good.

In less than a month, it's been amazing how Jewish communities have adapted to being mostly virtual. My home synagogue went from frowning on use of electronics at all on Shabbat and festivals, to unanimous agreement that we're keeping up the livestreaming once we're allowed back in our physical building, and the most vocal objectors to tech have started leading virtual services. Basically, the first time we did it, with great trepidation, we saw the faces of former members who have moved away, even to other continents, and of disabled and chronically ill members who are only variably able to attend shul in person. And suddenly, we all viscerally understood that using telecomms for religious purposes and to be together as a community is honoring the sabbath, not breaking it.

The other factor is that Zoom is good enough. It's not perfect, but the sound and picture quality, and the interoperability across devices, and the usability for people who aren't really tech savvy, are all good enough that you can just get on and have your virtual gathering. Yes, I know there are privacy and security concerns, but honestly I'm a bit impatient with hearing about those problems from people who live most of their online life in the Google empire. (People who are very strictly Free software only I have more sympathy for, but even then, if you're not providing tech support for people using elderly i-devices who can barely use a web browser, or at least working on products that are actually usable by people who haven't been programming since they could read, then my patience is still limited.)

In less than a month, we've gone from, stick a web cam in front of a service and hope, to people actually creating liturgy for distributed video call services. Even including fake Zoom-bombing by 'Pharaoh' refusing to let the people go, or 'Elijah'. What is still missing is the ritual around the Torah scrolls, and anything more than very limited music; my community pride themselves on their beautiful spontaneous harmonies and that's not really happening. But still, it's been amazing, people are praying together from their homes.

So, I agreed with my family that we would do a Zoom-based seder this year (I'm not quite sure about the coinage 'Zeder'). And planning the liturgy was a bit chaotic, but it's kind of always chaotic. We also all realized that actually, a virtual seder has a rather higher limit on how many people can join together, so instead of having two separate occasions for my family of origin and my family of choice, we all piled in to a huge seder, nine households, and my dad's sister and his oldest friend from uni who sometimes used to join us when we were kids. There was this moment when I was trying to introduce everybody who might not know each other, and I wanted to make it clear that my partners are my partners without getting derailed into a complicated poly coming out thing, and I said something kind of clumsy about usually being a family but less so at the moment under quarantine, and my lovely gf said, no, we're just as much family now, only in different physical places. There's a lot of sadness about not being able to gather in person for the one day in the year when we always manage a family reunion no matter what, but that moment went a long way to make up for it.

I struggled a bit with finding an online Hagaddah. I mean, there are a zillion options, but I found few that met my requirements of being relatively easy to use while you also have your fellow guests in their little video grid in another window, containing all the traditional text in a clear layout that distinguishes it from commentary, and not being intolerably sexist. But we made up seder plates as best as we could, with ingenious substitutions in some houses and the family's heirloom china in others. And mostly we could judge whose turn it was to speak, though it's cognitively extremely taxing compared to being at the same table, and we managed to read the essential words and have some discussions, and Judith (who has been learning Hebrew for about one term) sang the four questions. And we sort of managed to hide and hunt for the afikomen. I hadn't been sure about maintaining the Zoom connection while we were eating, but actually about half the houses dropped out and the rest of us remained and managed to chat and catch up and argue politics and even complete the remainder of a mostly finished Times jumbo crossword over Zoom. Very few aspects of a proper seder meal were lacking!

The thing about a virtual seder is, we finished the main ritual at 10, and clearing up for 2 is much quicker than clearing up for 20, and we didn't have to travel home via spending an hour standing in the doorway talking about how we really must get going, so actually we managed quite an early night. And then the morning service, which I basically never make it to, was online rather than in town, so I showed up. Then second night, my Stoke community completely spontaneously organized a virtual community seder, with no input at all from me. Someone else put together a virtual Hagaddah by combining pages from various sources and making a kind of slide-slow, and got everybody to take part in the reading, and did fun stuff for kids (another pupil from the same Hebrew class where I'm teaching my partners' kid did the four questions) the community just showed up and got on with it. A few stayed away because it's an Orthodox community and some followed the Ashkenazi rabbinate's ruling that Zoom seders are forbidden, but it was lovely to see at least some of my people.

And my sister posted me her amazing Pesach cakes, and she and some other people rallied round to make sure I had matzah, and somehow, it's the most terrible Pesach but it's also a really wonderful Pesach. I am loving reading of everybody else's improvised seders, or their first times leading instead of deferring to their elders, or people who took advantage of the virtual seder to be able to be with both sets of inlaws or even relatives who normally can't stand eachother, or the people who are normally too secular but decided that this year they wanted to mark the occasion. And lots lots lots of people have pointed out that it couldn't be more in the spirit of Pesach that we're all improvising what sanctity we can while we huddle from danger. I was particularly moved by jjhunter's haiku and all the responses:

may it pass over
our elders our sick our home
everyone held safe

Perhaps over zoom we will find companionship, or perhaps in the unusual quietness we will create space for the ‘still small voice’. It will be a Passover like no other, but this too shall Pass, and we will have done enough.

Happy 40th birthday to me! I'm currently in Connecticut visiting with the whole family, which is only somewhat coincidentally on my 40th birthday weekend. The main thing is the pizza! Two quick updates from this month, strawberry-related:

One of my all-time favorite games, Celeste, just got a new free 9th chapter (which is sized more like three chapters). This was a mixed blessing since over a year ago I finished all its hardest levels (all achievements) and then managed to pry myself from it. So I felt compelled to get the two new achievements to get back to 100%, but it was a somewhat hypnotizing and RSI-inducing grind. (Especially since I had gotten pretty rusty. I even forgot that you can hold onto walls, which made the first few levels much harder...) The worst part was that the final level was rumored to be kinda ridiculous, and the "WOW" achievement even moreso, so I was feeling worried about that the whole week it took to get through the prior 99. All told it was pretty worthwhile; the level design is really admirable as usual, and it stays true to the signature difficulty curve. I recommend it.

Second is a font sighting sent by a friendly Internet stranger. This one is from a fairly popular (18M views this month) music video called Fresa, which features Columbian Reggaeton artist Lalo Ebratt. A sighting in such a video would be interesting, but the wildest thing is where it is:

The in-person annual U.S. Grand Lodge Joint Meeting scheduled for July 2020 in Oakland CA has been canceled. Individual governing bodies will meet online; members of those bodies will receive further information. A decision on whether the Convocation of Lovers scheduled for August 2020 in Cleveland OH will be canceled will be announced by April …

Continue reading