ENGIE, a global leader in energy transition, today announced a new initiative with IBM. This nonexclusive, technological and commercial alliance is designed to improve the management of cities by looking at patterns, event correlation, anomaly detection and real-time data across all parts of cities.

IBM scientists have developed a new approach to simulate molecules on a quantum computer that may one day help revolutionize chemistry and materials science. The scientists successfully used a seven-qubit quantum processor to address the molecular structure problem for beryllium hydride (BeH2) – the largest molecule simulated on a quantum computer to date. The results demonstrate a path of exploration for near-term quantum systems to enhance our understanding of complex chemical reactions that could lead to practical applications.

IBM today announced the first clients to tap into its IBM Q™ early-access commercial quantum computing systems to explore practical applications important to business and science. They include: JPMorgan Chase, Daimler AG, Samsung, JSR Corporation, Barclays, Hitachi Metals, Honda, Nagase, Keio University, Oak Ridge National Lab, Oxford University and University of Melbourne.

IBM has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays (SSA) for the fourth year in a row.

IBM has been recognized as a storage software Leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions1. In its Magic Quadrants’, Gartner analysts evaluate technology and solutions with an ‘Ability to Execute’ and a ‘Completeness of Vision’.

IBM Security today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. as a Leader for the sixth consecutive year in the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites1 for its ability to execute and completeness of vision.

IBM today announced second-quarter 2015 diluted earnings from continuing operations of $3.58 per share, down 15 percent year-to-year. Operating (non-GAAP) diluted earnings from continuing operations were $3.84 per share, compared with operating diluted earnings of $4.43 per share in the second quarter of 2014, a decrease of 13 percent.

IBM today announced that for the seventh consecutive year, Gartner, Inc. has named IBM as a leader in the April 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management.

IBM today announced second-quarter earnings results.

IBM today announced third-quarter earnings results.

IBM announced today two significant quantum processor upgrades for its IBM Q early-access commercial systems. These upgrades represent rapid advances in quantum hardware as IBM continues to drive progress across the entire quantum computing technology stack, with focus on systems, software, applications and enablement.

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.50 per common share, payable December 9, 2017 to stockholders of record November 10, 2017.

IBM today announced fourth-quarter and full-year 2017 earnings results.

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.50 per common share, payable March 10, 2018 to stockholders of record February 9, 2018. IBM has paid consecutive quarterly dividends every year since 1916.

IBM today announced a research collaboratory in Singapore, where researchers from IBM intend to collaborate with scientists and engineers from public agencies in Singapore to improve the quality of its urban services. The focus of this research effort will be to use sensor networks to more effectively model, predict and manage the use of natural and physical infrastructure resources – water, transport and energy.  

IBM has successfully prototyped a new software architecture for automating data management, potentially making it easier for researchers to collect usable information from mega-scale data collection projects like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) global telescope which aims to address unanswered questions about our universe.

IBM's World Community Grid, a worldwide network of PC owners helping scientists solve humanitarian challenges, today announced several computing projects aimed at developing techniques to produce cleaner and safer water, an increasingly scarce commodity eluding at least 1.2 billion people worldwide.

IBM Q Network to explore practical applications of quantum computing for business and science with University of Melbourne, JPMorgan Chase, Daimler AG, Samsung, JSR Corporation, Barclays, Hitachi Metals, Honda, Nagase, Keio University, Oak Ridge National Lab, and Oxford University.

IBM positioned as the Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Hybrid Infrastructure Managed Services, Asia Pacific

Zoo and Aquarium Association Uses IBM Technology to Support Endangered Species Programme

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”.

Moving was always stressful, but to be placed in a nationwide lockdown only a few weeks after moving was just too much for Ginny to think about. At least she had a fit neighbor keep her company... from two meters away, of course.

From just about everybody.

1. Are you an Essential Worker?

Nope. I have been comfortably working from home for a month, making online education. It's useful, thousands of people have been learning about bacterial genomics from my stuff, but it's not essential. In many ways my job hasn't changed very much since lockdown since we did a lot of collaborating with scientists all over the world by conference call, in order to make material that goes on the internet anyway.

2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine has started?

Hi, I've just finished celebrating Pesach. The two of us got through about 2 bottles of wine in the course of two seders and two kiddushes. And in the couple of weeks before that, something around one bottle between the two of us, again mostly for religious reasons rather than mental health reasons.

3. If you have kids... Are they driving you nuts?

I don't have kids, but there are children who are normally part of my life and now I'm quarantined in a different house from them. They are being amazing and bringing positivity to my life through the limited interaction we're allowed, playing music with me over video link, waving and sending hugs when I'm calling their adults or walking past their house for exercise. I am probably less sane than usual but it's from too little contact with not-my-own children, not too much.

4. What new hobby have you taken up during this

Online play readthroughs, organized by the marvellous wildeabandon. I've tried to start an ultra, ultra low-key exercise routine at home, which isn't a completely new hobby, but is something I hadn't done for some years.

5. How many grocery runs have you done?

None at all since I had maybe suspicious symptoms. We've got by on the generosity of friends bringing us occasional top-ups of extra-perishable stuff like milk and mushrooms, a big online order that fortuitously arrived just before we started full isolation, and a couple of local organizations that were able to make limited deliveries of produce. Before that, we weren't really counting. We had a decent amount of supplies in at the start of lockdown, and jack was visiting the local corner shop a couple of times a week to top up on fresh produce (with careful distancing), but we haven't needed to make a 'run' to a big supermarket since lockdown officially started.

6. What are you spending your stimulus check on?

I'm not getting any extra money, which is reasonable because I don't need any extra money. I am still working full time and still earning my full salary, as is jack. I'm not really even spending much extra on working from home rather than in an office; it's warm enough not to need the heating on during the day, and we already had plenty of broadband. We're spending very slightly more on food because we're getting everything delivered rather than picking up our own shopping, but it's fairly trivial on the scale of things.

Also, can I just say it's a weird framing to talk about a 'stimulus', ie money provided to encourage people to spend and keep the economy buoyant. The state is paying money to people to make it possible for them to stay home without starving, and really the aim is, or should be, to keep the economy as stagnant as possible, not to encourage economic activity which would involve people interacting and spreading the infection.

7. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?

My plague of disappointment started with a work trip to Paraguay to help with some in-person training. Then I missed spending Passover with my family like I normally do. Other than that, I saw this coming far enough in advance that I didn't make a whole lot of plans for this spring or summer


8. Are you keeping your housework done?

About the same amount as normal. To an extent we tend to tidy for visitors and we're not having any visitors. But we're mostly succeeding with keeping on top of general maintenance. On the other hand I did zero Passover cleaning because I was isolating from jack at the time so not going into the kitchen, and I was uncertain enough about supplies that I wasn't willing to eliminate leavened products.

9a. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?

Lionheart
Porco Rosso

9b. What are you reading right now?

Err... Twitter, mostly. And some Gemara, the mystical bit of Chagigah, which is a project I've been meaning to get to for ages, and which I will hopefully be talking about soon.

9c. What video game are you playing?

At the weekend managed to progress our three-way game of Stellaris with cjwatson in a different house, so that was cool. Still a lot of Monster Legends on my phone. A little bit of the second chapter of 12 Labours of Hercules, but only about as often as I was playing it anyway, which isn't very often.

10. What are you streaming with?

Netflix, and even that occasionally. Spotify and YouTube for music. I haven't managed to watch any of the free broadcast theatre and opera performances yet.

11. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?

Very unlikely but not completely impossible. I'm quarantined away from the partner I'm most likely to have potentially-reproductive sex with (but I guess rarely indulging isn't never). I am 41 and was recently diagnosed with PCOS so I'm quite possibly not as fertile as I spent most of my adult life assuming. I have a coil, which should be pretty reliable at preventing pregnancy, but it has reached the end of its predicted 10-year lifetime, and getting it replaced was one of the things I failed to get sorted out while non-emergency medical stuff was still happening.

My partner is going to have a baby much sooner than 9 months away though! She made it before the virus even existed, and I have absolutely no idea how long it will be before I'm allowed to meet the little one, but I'm still quite excited.

12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?

About the same as not in quarantine: we call it goulash, but it isn't really anything to do with goulash. It's a sort of veggie chilli, basically onions, garlic, spice, tomato sauce, some combination of Quorn mince and beans, and veg if we have lots of veg available but otherwise it's nice on its own.

13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?

So siderea the actual psych says it only counts as paranoia if you're irrationally afraid that beings with agency ... are behaving malevolently towards you personally. So, no, I do not think the virus is out to get me nor deliberately created by evil people.

However, I've already spent much of the last five years worrying that the government and much of the populace want me dead, and it's the worst version of that increasingly nasty government which is in charge of deciding whether buying ventilators and medical equipment is a good use of money that could otherwise be used for bridges to nowhere. When I hear people ranting about foreigners or Europeans or 'citizens of nowhere' it feels personal. I think it isn't, mostly. I'm a shirley exception for lots of people, or at least, I see posts on social media about how it's morally good to exterminate Jews from people who are broadly civil to me as an individual.

I'm scared of vigilantes who are using the pandemic as an excuse for violence against people they don't like being out in public, and to an extent I'm scared of overreach by the official police. And I'm somewhat scared of looting, of people getting desperate enough that they start breaking into houses like mine where there is enough toilet paper and storable foods. And a little bit scared of wannabe fascists trying to deliberately infect liberals and Jews. But not very scared, not to the point that it's actually interfering with my day-to-day life. Anxious, I guess, rather than paranoid.

14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?

Nah. Internet is fine and I'm deeply grateful for that.

15. What month do you predict this all ends?

I don't think it's going to end, really, not all of it at once. It's going to be a very gradual climb back towards sufficient population immunity that we can live our lives without infection avoidance being the major determining factor in all decisions.

Predicting the end of the plague would require me to predict all of: how fast scientists will come up with a vaccine and reliable tests; how the disease itself will move through the population; and what our terrible politicians will decide, and I don't really have any information on any of those.

I'm guessing some relaxation of lockdown round about July or August, but we will still be very much in a pandemic situation. Sticking my finger in the air I think we'll likely have the capacity for mass vaccination and testing by early 2021, let's say January. But whether we will actually in practice have an effective programme of prevention and detection depends on decisions by a leadership who are erratic and evil, plus we are heading for a cliff-edge end to our Brexit transition at the end of 2020, so I think people will still be getting infected and dying well into 2021 or even 2022.

16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?

Go to my OSOs' house and hug my partners and their children. And meet the baby, because I'm pretty certain that getting off quarantine is happening after baby is external.

17. Where do you wish you were right now?

I'm pretty happy with my location, my nice pleasant house with all my friends inside my computer, surrounded by a beautiful spring. The problem is not where I am, it's that I have been forced to stay here for a month and expect to continue here for months to come. I wish I could go to other places, especially places where my friends are.

I slightly wish to be in a country with a competent government, if I have to pick somewhere I'd probably go for New Zealand, but I don't actually wish I were in NZ, since I don't know anybody there and I can't imagine the circumstances that would lead to being there.

18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?

Visiting people in person, primarily.

19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?

No. We usually buy a big family pack of TP once every few weeks and we happened to do so just before lockdown. Also I don't believe in hand sanitizer in a domestic setting.

20. Do you have enough food to last a month?

Yeah, probably. If we really couldn't get any fresh supplies for a whole month we would struggle, and we haven't counted it out in terms of calories and micronutrients per person per day, but we have decent amounts of long-lasting carbs and tinned vegetables.

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