Category Archives: Quantum Computing

Quantum Software and Services Leader Will Use Funding to Develop New Quantum Software APIs for Deep Learning and Finance and Fuel Expansion of European Operations in Paris

PALO ALTO, Calif. and PARIS, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --QC Ware, a leading quantum software and services company, today announced that it has been awarded a $1.5M project in Deeptech Development Funding from Bpifrance. The funding will be used to develop two new quantum software APIs for deep learning and finance which will be integrated into QC Ware's Forge quantum-as-a-service platform. With a goal to create a quantum software ecosystem in Europe, the funds will also be used to hire ten new employees for QC Ware's Paris office within the next three years.

"We are honored to have been awarded our second grant from Bpifrance after the i-Nov award," said Iordanis Kerenidis, Head of Quantum Algorithms for QC Ware. "Quantum computing promises to revolutionize the future of information technology. With this new funding, we plan to continue growing the quantum software ecosystem in Europe from our Paris offices and fuel our mission to help companies in Europe and around the world prepare for the upcoming quantum disruption."

QC Ware Awarded a $1.5 Million Project from Bpifrance to Create a Quantum Computing Software Ecosystem in Europe

QC Ware's growing network of customers - which includes Aisin Group, Airbus, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), BMW Group, Equinor, Goldman Sachs, and Total - collaborate with QC Ware on the design of practical algorithms that deliver performance on near-term quantum computing hardware. By potentially halving the industry timeline for quantum advantage, QC Ware has boosted enterprise and U.S. federal sector adoption of its algorithms for quantum machine learning, quantum Monte Carlo simulations, and quantum optimization. The company is experiencing brisk growth in collaborations with customers and hardware partners in fields that are ripe for quantum disruption, including chemistry simulations, materials discovery, drug design, and beyond.

Designed for data scientists and quantum engineers,Forge delivers a competitively advantageous path to quantum readiness. Forge distinguishes itself from other quantum computing cloud services by providing data scientists with access to pioneering and fine-tuned turnkey quantum algorithms for practical industry problems. Furthermore, quantum engineers can use Forge to gain access to the fundamental components of QC Ware's unique algorithmic IP and reuse these as building blocks for more complex approaches.

About QC WareQC Wareis a quantum software and services company focused on ensuring enterprises are prepared for the emerging quantum computing disruption. QC Ware specializes in the development of applications for near-term quantum computing hardware with a team composed of some of the industry's foremost experts in quantum computing. Its growing network of customers includes AFRL, Aisin Group, Airbus, BMW Group, Covestro, Equinor, Goldman Sachs, and Total. QC Ware Forge, the company's flagship quantum computing cloud service, is built for data scientists with no quantum computing background. It provides unique, performant, turnkey quantum computing algorithms. QC Ware is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and supports its European customers through its subsidiary in Paris. QC Ware also organizesQ2B, the largest annual gathering of the international quantum computing community.

Press Contact:Tim SmithElement Public Relations[emailprotected]415-350-3019

SOURCE QC Ware Corp.

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QC Ware Awarded a $1.5 Million Project in Deeptech Development Funding from Bpifrance to Create a Quantum Computing Software Ecosystem in Europe - PR...

The U.S. and Sweden Agree to Cooperate on Quantum Technology

The U.S. and Sweden has also signed a signed a Joint Statement on Cooperation in Quantum Information Science and Technology (QIST). Just a few days earlier, the U.S. had signed a similar agreement with Finland. The Joint Statement advances the shared agendas of both countries to engage in good-faith cooperation in QIST for building a global market and supply chain, and to create respectful and inclusive scientific research communities. In 2018, Sweden established the Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology with several universities and industrial partners and is investing 1 billion Swedish Krona ($105M USD) to support advanced research in quantum computing, simulation, communication, and sensing. A news release announcing this signing can be accessed on the U.S. governments Quantum.gov website here.

April 12, 2022

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The U.S. and Sweden Agree to Cooperate on Quantum Technology - Quantum Computing Report

NEW YORK, April 6, 2022 Accenture has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, inGood Chemistry Company, a company that uses quantum chemistry, machine learning and quantum computing to accelerate new materials design.

The Good Chemistry Company platform,QEMIST Cloud, combines cloud, AI, and quantum computing in an integrated platform designed for developers. The platforms engine enables faster, more accurate, and scalable ways to perform computational chemistry simulations.

Were doubling down on the growth potential of quantum computing and uncovering new ways to navigate its potential while empowering our clients to confidently absorb and access this breakthrough technology, said Tom Lounibos, managing director, Accenture Ventures. Simulating chemistry in this new way leverages easily and readily accessible computers on the cloud to perform simulations that were previously intractable even on expensive, high-performance computing environments. This brings a competitive advantage to clients and can change pharmaceutical drug discovery and more.

According to theAccenture Technology Vision 2022, 69% of global executives say quantum computing will have a breakthrough or transformational positive impact on their organizations in the future. Quantum is the pinnacle of next generation problem solving and Accenture andBiogen collaborated with 1QBitalready to accelerate drug discovery, developing a proof of concept that validated a quantum-computing molecule comparison approach and building an enterprise-ready, quantum-enabled application with transparent processes that generates molecular comparison results with deeper insights about shared traits.

Arman Zaribafiyan, CEO of Good Chemistry Company said, With our platform, we are re-imagining the way computational chemistry simulations are done. Simulating chemistry on computers will help drive faster, more accurate and more accessible materials innovation in the decades to come. With Accentures support and collaboration, we will be able to explore the vastness of chemical space and enable rational materials design at scale.

Carl Dukatz, Accentures global quantum computing lead said, By building on and extending our relationship with 1QBit to the newly formed Good Chemistry Company, we are demonstrating our ongoing commitment to accelerating quantum computing innovation. We are witnessing the emergence of a new class of scalable cloud-based technology that is stretching the boundaries of what computers can solve. We recognize the potential of arming our clients with the next generation of chemistry, material science, and structural design.

Good Chemistry Company is the latest organization to join Accenture VenturesProject Spotlight, an engagement and investment program that connects emerging technology software startups with the Global 2000 to fill strategic innovation gaps. Project Spotlight offers extensive access to Accentures domain expertise and its enterprise clients, helping startups harness human creativity and deliver on the promise of their technology.

Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services all powered by the worlds largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 699,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us ataccenture.com.

About Good Chemistry Company

Good Chemistry Companys mission is to enable high-throughput high-accuracy computational chemistry simulations to accelerate new material designs. Their proprietary QEMIST Cloud, a cloud-based computational chemistry platform, provides the building blocks for computational chemistry developers to build chemical simulation applications and workflows, using emerging algorithms in quantum chemistry, machine learning, and quantum computing. Through simple, easy-to-use APIs, QEMIST Cloud provides access to computational chemistry tools with unprecedented scale enabled by the power of cloud. Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, Good Chemistry Companys interdisciplinary team comprises computational and quantum chemists, software developers, ML engineers and quantum computing scientists. For more information about Good Chemistry Company, visitgoodchemistry.com.

Source: Accenture

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Accenture Invests in Good Chemistry Company to Drive Quantum Computing in Materials and Life Sciences - HPCwire

Every few years IBM brings out a new addition to its Z series mainframe family. From the information accompanying the release of the new enterprise system, IBM appears to be touting the new z16 machines ability to handle real time fraud detection for instant payments across the financial sector. It also offers an AI (artificial intelligence) accelerator, using IBMs Telum chip. This will certainly be good news for many financial institutes. For instance, speaking at a recent IBM-hosted roundtable, Steve Suarez, global head of innovation, finance & risk at HSBC, described how the bank was drowning in data. Suarez sees a need to have technology that can help the bank provide insights that actually benefit people.

What is interesting from the virtual z16 briefing Computer Weekly attended is IBMs focus on the new machines ability to protect against hackers using quantum computing to break the strong encryption that underpins financial transactions.

IBM distinguished engineer, Anne Dames said: Good technology can be used to do bad things. In other words, a quantum computer could be used to break the cryptographic keys that are used to encrypt data.

We are entering a new cryptographic era, she warns, adding that the IT industry needs to act now before there is an effective quantum computing based attack.

The worst case scenario IBM paints is where a successful hacking attack gains access to a large quantity of encrypted data. Since this data is encrypted, it is near impossible to decipher it in a realistic timescale. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology warns that if large-scale quantum computers are ever built, they will be able to break many of the public-key cryptosystems currently in use. This would seriously compromise the confidentiality and integrity of digital communications on the Internet and elsewhere. Nist is encouraging the IT sector to develop post-quantum cryptography and IBMs z16 is one of the first systems to claim it is quantum safe.

While this is clearly an important development and IBMs efforts should be applauded, one cant help worrying that IBM, Nist and the IT sector at large, are somehow missing the bigger picture. Breaking cryptography is one thing, but quantum computers have the potential to revolutionise drug development and the ability to create new chemical processes such as to reduce carbon emissions. The flip side is that these techniques may also be used to develop devastatingly effective, targeted chemical and biological weapons. As such, policy makers need to wake up to the risk, and track quantum computing in the same way that atomic, biological and chemical weapon materials are monitored.

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Quantum computing and the bigger picture - ComputerWeekly.com

DUBLIN, April 05, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Artificial Intelligence in Defense Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Component (Hardware, Software, and Services), Technology (Advanced Computing, AI Systems, and Learning and Intelligence), Platform (Land, Air, and Naval), and Application" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global artificial intelligence in defense market is expected to grow from US$ 6,404.73 million in 2021 to US$ 13,153.31 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 10.8% during 2021-2028.

As global tensions have persisted over the last few years, various affected nations plan and take measures to improve and recapitalize the defense status. Threats are continually evolving, i.e., from the conventional land-based to hybrid warfare threats. To address security threats and tackle terrorism, governments of several nations have already started to increase their defense budgets.

According to Forbes data of April 2021, global military spending grew to nearly US$ 2 trillion in 2020, a 2.6% increase in real terms in 2019. The growth in spending came in a year where global GDP contracted 4.4% due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with just five countries accounting for 62% of total expenditure. With US$ 778 billion, the US was the world's top spender once again by a considerable difference, and it accounted for 39% of total global military expenditure.

Further, the increasing geopolitical tensions and trade wars among major countries are driving high investments in the defense sector contributing to the growth of artificial intelligence in defense market. A significant portion of the investment is dedicated to the procurement of AI in defense research.

For instance, China is investing at least US$ 7 billion through 2030, including US$ 2 billion for a research park in Beijing. The Chinese government foresees a US$ 150 billion artificial intelligence industry by 2030 and has the most comprehensive national plan to become a technology leader.

Story continues

According to the AIndra Labs, new Chinese companies received 48% of all funds for artificial intelligence investments in July 2019. Further, Russia spends about US$ 12.5 million annually on AI, where many of Russia's artificial intelligence demonstrations are military in nature, such as AI-assisted combat aircraft and automatic artillery.

Therefore, the increasing government spending for incorporating AI in the defense sector drives the artificial intelligence in defense market.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Artificial Intelligence in Defense Market

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken several industries. The tremendous growth in the spread of the virus has urged governments worldwide to impose strict restrictions on vehicles and human movement. Due to travel bans, mass lockdowns, and business shutdowns, the pandemic has affected economies and countless industries in various countries. The lockdown imposition has resulted in the lesser production of commodities, goods, and services.

Even though the COVID-19 pandemic caused a large-scale impact on economies across the globe in 2020, leading to many challenges, the artificial intelligence in defense market has continued to expand. This can be seen from both the demand as well the supply sides, as leading manufacturers such as IBM Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Technologies Corporation, BAE Systems plc., and Northrop Grumman continue to invest heavily in developing artificial intelligence capabilities, and governments continue to invest significantly in securing these advanced systems.

Key Market Dynamics

Market Drivers

Market Restraints

Market Opportunities

Future Trends

Company Profiles

BAE Systems plc

IBM Corporation

Leidos

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Raytheon Technologies Corporation

Charles River Analytics, Inc.

General Dynamics Information Technology, Inc. (General Dynamics Corporation)

Shield AI

SparkCognition, Inc.

Thales Group

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rhy4zp

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220405005767/en/

Contacts

ResearchAndMarkets.comLaura Wood, Senior Press Managerpress@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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Global Artificial Intelligence in Defense Markets, 2021-2028: Growing Adoption of AI in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Growing Development of Robots Using...

The Pentagon in Arlington, Va., as seen on Sept. 17, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)

The U.S. Department of Defense's outgoing chief data officer called for the Pentagon to make urgent investments to defend against potential espionage from quantum computers -- nascent technology that could one day break the encryption that protects American secrets.

In his first interview since leaving his post last month, David Spirk, who spent two years in his role, told Bloomberg News that the Pentagon needs to speed up efforts to counter adversaries who are developing military tools supported by advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and eventually quantum science.

Quantum computing may prove far more able than existing technology to solve mathematical problems at exponentially faster speeds. That could enable operators to unscramble the algorithms that underpin encryption protocols, unlocking an array of sensitive data.

"I don't think that there's enough senior leaders getting their heads around the implications of quantum," Spirk said. "Like AI, I think that's a new wave of compute that when it arrives is going to be a pretty shocking moment to industry and government alike."

"We have to pick up pace because we have competitors who are also attempting to accelerate," he added.

Spirk's comments come amid warnings that U.S. adversaries, particularly China, are aggressively pursuing advanced technologies that could radically accelerate the pace of modern warfare. China is investing in AI and quantum sciences as part of its plan to become an innovation superpower, according to the Pentagon's latest annual report to Congress on China's military power. China is "at or near the lead on numerous science fields," including AI and quantum, it said.

The National Security Agency, meanwhile, said last year that the adversarial use of a quantum computer "could be devastating" to the U.S. and its national security systems. The NSA said it could take 20 years or more to roll out new post-quantum cryptography that would resist such code-cracking.

Tim Gorman, a spokesperson at the Pentagon, said the Department of Defense was taking post-quantum cryptography seriously and coordinating with Congress and across government agencies. He added there was "a significant effort" underway.

A January presidential memo further charged agencies with establishing a timeline for transitioning to quantum resistant cryptography.

Among the efforts underway to bolster defenses against quantum-based attacks, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, known as NIST, is seeking to select new quantum-proof encryption algorithms from seven finalists shortly as part of a global competition.

Jonathan Katz, computer science professor at the University of Maryland who submitted a "post-quantum algorithm" to the NIST competition, said the stakes in the NIST competition were high: an algorithm that later proved vulnerable would be "a disaster." Once a choice is made, the U.S. Department of Defense faces a huge task in upgrading all its software and hardware that features algorithms, he said, adding that included not only servers and laptops but also parts of submarines, tanks, helicopters and weapons systems.

Experts generally assess large-scale quantum computing may be 15 to 20 years away if it is ever even developed, but the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Agency, or DARPA, launched a project this February to explore the possibility that a breakthrough could be developed "much sooner."

Joe Altepeter, who manages DARPA's new quantum project, told Bloomberg there was a lot of "hype" over industry claims about the arrival of quantum computing, with several "hardware miracles" still standing in the way. Some of the smartest physicists he knew were divided over whether useful quantum computing would ever exist, Altepeter said, adding that the risk was such that it was important to develop resilient systems.

Spirk said the Pentagon needs to start preparing "now," arguing military applications for quantum computing could be only five to 10 years away. The Pentagon needed to work at the same speed as commercial vendors that are already exploring ways to use quantum-resistant cryptography to safeguard financial and health-care sectors, he said.

If the U.S. doesn't make the right investments in defensive quantum today, "then our concepts around encryption, data security and cybersecurity will be obsolete because the computers will break our cryptography," Spirk said. He added that all the encrypted data that adversaries have already gathered would also risk exposure.

Spirk, a former U.S. Marine, became the first chief data officer at Special Operations Command before he joined the Pentagon. He said he left the chief data officer post after a two-year commitment to rejoin his family in Florida. The departure follows last year's resignation of the U.S. Air Force's first chief software officer, Nicolas Chaillan, who previously told the Financial Times that the U.S. was losing the AI race to China.

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Pentagon's outgoing data boss warns of quantum cyber threats - Stars and Stripes

Who, Me? Who has got your back up? Forget comments in code, what do you do when all your source has been packed into the trunk of a family sedan? Welcome to Who, Me?

Today's story, from a reader Regomised as "Al", concerns his time at a company in the 1980s. The company was working on a project to replace thousands of ageing "dumb" terminals with PCs. "The Great PC Invasion and Distributed Computing Revolution were under way," Al observed.

"The company had hired a collection of experienced PC and minicomputer programmers who were led by a management team of Mainframe Gods (as they viewed themselves)."

We know just the type.

"As a bunch of hotshot PC and UN*X types," he went on, "we demanded a version control system and a tool for backing up the source tree. In their wisdom, the Mainframe Gods chose not to invest in spurious tech like backups and version control, therefore each programmer had a personal responsibility to back up their source code."

It went about as well as you might imagine. Some staff followed the process for a bit, but after a while nobody bothered. Nobody, that is, except for the person who did the builds. "Dave" (for that was not his name) had all the current production code on his PC. Everything. In one place.

It was fine at first. Dave worked hard and also wrote a lot of code. Al couldn't tell how good it was; the words "Code Review" were alien to the company. But the builds happened and the terminal emulation software was delivered. Everyone was happy. Even though Dave had the only copy of the "official" source code.

Al described Dave as "a big guy." He was softly spoken and tended to (mostly) keep his opinions to himself. "He had his eccentricities," remembered Al, "such as a fondness for rifles that he kept in the trunk of his car."

Of course, the inevitable happened. After what Al delicately described as a series of "issues," Dave quit or was asked to leave the company (both mysteriously happened at the same time).

However, rather than march Dave directly out of the building, the geniuses in management gave him the rest of the day to finish up his work.

"During the afternoon of that day, Dave's manager looked out the window to see Dave loading boxes and boxes of floppy disks into his car," said Al.

A curious thing to do on one's last day. Perhaps Dave was just doing a final clear-out of office stationery? Or perhaps...

The manager scurried over to Dave's PC and found it coming to the end of a FORMAT operation. The hard disk containing the only complete copy of the source had been wiped. The floppies Dave was loading up into his car, nestled among the rifles, were the only backups in existence.

"To his credit, Dave's manager talked him off the cliff and got the backups returned to the office," Al told us. Dave was then politely escorted to a coffee shop to complete his last day while a panicked staffer managed to restore the backups to the now blank PC and the project could continue.

"The project did eventually succeed, but we did have further harrowing moments with more conventional causes," said Al. "We did establish regular backups and duplication of key source code."

"The moral of the story: back up your data. Trust but verify."

We like to think Dave had no malicious intent and was simply tidying up after himself. Surely not a final act of vengeance? And considering what else was in the trunk, it could have gone very, very differently.

Ever been tempted to dash out a quick FORMAT C: or a sudo shred just for giggles? Confess all with an email to Who, Me?

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What do you do when all your source walks out the door? - The Register

Tokyo, April 6, 2022 Fujitsu today announced Fujitsu Computing as a Service (CaaS) offering computing resources such as Fujitsus quantum-inspired Digital Annealer technology; AI and machine learning software applications; and technology used in the Arm-based Fugaku, the worlds top-ranked supercomputer.

Fujitsu said it began preorders today for for Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC, which offers the computing power of the Arm-powered Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000, with delivery start in Japanese in October. A global rollout will follow. Thissupercomputer model utilizes technologies used the worlds most powerful supercomputer, Fugaku.

Fujitsu said it also will provides HPC deployment services and, on the operational side, performance tuning and app analysis for customers conducting research and analysis. The company said compute nodes, login nodes, job scheduler, storage, and application software for HPC are set up in advance (users do not have to build their own HPC environment and only need to prepare data needed for their analysis).

Fugaku was developed as a supercomputer featuring the latest high-performance computing technology and is being used in research and development with the aim of realizing DX and Society 5.0 to contribute to the fulfillment of various SDGs, said Satoshi Matsuoka, director, Center for Computational Science at the RIKEN Scientific Research Institue. Within the past two years, 149 companies have already utilized Fugaku in 48 use cases primarily in manufacturing, including trial operations prior to full-scale implementation. The demand for technological capabilities offered by Fugaku continues to grow, coinciding with successful use cases in the shift toward the cloud. We are working with Fujitsu to make its CaaS to be highly compatible with Fugaku to support such requirements, and we expect CaaS to become an important service for quickly connecting R & D on Fugaku to industrial use and practical implementation in society. Moving forward, we will collaborate with Fujitsu to further synergize Fugaku with this new service to provide its capabilities seamlessly in the cloud.

Vivek Mahajan, Chief Technology Officer (Corporate Executive Officer, SEVP) Fujitsu Limited, comments: CaaS will provide customers with seamless access to services on the public cloud to meet rapidly increasing computing demands, leveraging Fujitsus world-leading advanced computing technologies. In the future, we look to further expand the portfolio with access to technologies like quantum computing. This move marks an important milestone toward democratizing high-performance and quantum computing and will play an important role in the achievement of Fujitsus Purpose: to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation.

Fujitsu said that in order to realize its vision of a more sustainable world embodied by its global business brand FUJITSU Uvance, Fujitsu will draw on CaaS to promote the commercial use of a range of advanced computing technologies, which have until the present been largely limited to applications in an academic context due in part to prohibitively high investment costs and implementation and operational loads.

Cost remains a major obstacle for many companies and organizations aiming to apply advanced computing technologies like Fujitsus Digital Annealer and high performance computing (HPC) in their business, the company said. To address this issue, Fujitsu will offer users easy access to a range of services under its new CaaS portfolio, allowing users from a wide range of industries to easily tap into the power offered by Fujitsus advanced computing technologies.

Building on its new service portfolio CaaS, Fujitsu plans to conduct trials with organizations and companies to optimize designs for the manufacturing industry and optimize drug discovery for pharmaceutical companies.

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Fujitsu Launches Computing as a Service for HPC and AI - insideHPC - insideHPC

SpaceX and Tesla tycoon Elon Musk won't be joining Twitter's board, despite last week revealing he had acquired a 9.2 per cent stake in the microblogging service.

News of the change of heart came in a tweet from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who got straight to the point: "Elon has decided not to join our board. I sent a brief note to the company, sharing with you all here."

That note, added as an image bearing text, opened "Dear Team" and explained that Musk on Friday advised he would not join the board.

No explanation of the change of mind was offered.

But Agrawal's post offers a hint. It mentions that had Musk taken a seat, he would have been compelled "to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders."

Musk's many criticisms of Twitter and personal advocacy for features that fit his belief in maximal free speech are arguably not in the company's best interests. Having him continue to espouse them while on the company board may well have attracted the sort of regulatory attention no company desires.

An example of Musk's output that might not be entirely compatible with a board seat include these weekend missives.

The Register submits that eroding Twitter's brand equity by renaming for nervous laughter, then ditching its main revenue source, might not be proposals that deserve lengthy debate at the company's board meetings.

But what would your correspondent know, seeing as it is Musk, and not I, who found nearly $3 billion with which to buy a slab of Twitter?

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Elon Musk won't join Twitter's board after all - The Register

Dell employees in the Netherlands will be able to work four days a week from this month, a director of Dell Technologies Netherlands has confirmed to The Register.

The news comes just weeks before what is touted to be the biggest ever 4-day working week trial begins in the UK.

Isabel Moll, newly appointed vice president and general manager at Dell Netherlands, told us the part-time pilot has already been rolled out by the Dutch and Argentinian operations.

"On April 1 we welcomed our first starter, and we're currently in the late phases of the interviewing process with [another]. We're hoping to welcome many other candidates in the near future, once the word spreads more and more."

She noted that the scheme was also open to existing employees, with pay corresponding to hours worked.

Speaking to local financial news daily Financieele Dagblad, Dell GM Moll described the April Argentinian and Dutch pilot as addressing both the issues of scarcity in the labor market and a way to bring in a more diverse group, including women and younger people, who are no longer interested in working until "they drop" or have other obligations.

She said such people often end up leaving the sector, to its detriment, or use their technical skills in other sectors which have less intensive hours, telling the paper: "Working harder won't pay off, because the pond is empty..."

As for scarcity in the market, the Netherlands has a large pool of part-timers to draw from. According to data from The World Bank, the part-time workforce in the Netherlands is over 55 percent, with Dell noting this went up to 60 percent for women in the Dutch labor force. This compares to 43 percent in Germany, 41 percent in the UK, and just 28 percent in the United States, although these figures are not broken down into business sectors. For the Netherlands, then, it's an opportunity to make hires from a group it wouldn't usually have access to when trying to fill a five-day-a-week role.

Moll told us she knows from her network in the IT world that other American tech companies who have bases in the country, including Microsoft, are watching the pilot closely.

She told The Register via email: "Other big American tech companies in the Netherlands did not adjust their KPIs to the amount of worked hours up until now and are looking at our pilot with warm interest."

The US is one of the top 10 countries for most overtime worked, according to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Latest figures from the US bureau of labor say that around 33 percent of developers and IT professionals work overtime, clocking an average of 7.4 hours extra (declared) per week.

Meanwhile, over in the UK, for a period of six months stretching from June to December this year, 3,000 workers across 60 companies will work for four days instead of five with no loss of pay, among them workers from Canon's UK arm.

According to the Guardian, the UK trial is being run by Autonomy (the British think tank, not the software company controversially acquired by HP), Boston College in the US, the British universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the campaign groups 4 Day Week Global, and 4 Day Week UK.

Crucially, Dell Netherlands' four-day work week trial will avoid cramming five days' worth of work into the four days, with Moll stating: "For now we're piloting four days a week of eight hours. However, it's a pilot, so three days of eight hours will definitely also be an option in the future."

Other working hours experiments have condensed five working days' worth of hours into four days using the so-called "410 schedule," (four 10-hour shifts) tested by Atlassian, among others.

According to one of the broader studies of the past few years, performed from 2015 to 2019 in Iceland, productivity gains made up for fewer working hours [PDF], although it is worth noting that test subjects still worked more than four days a week. Some 2,500 people took part in the study, which again was backed by Autonomy along with Icelandic NGO Alda. In the study, the working week was reduced from 40 hours to 35 or 36 hours and 40-hour pay levels were maintained. Productivity either stayed the same or improved, the research found.

Critics say that the idea is expensive to implement, and that hand-offs between shift workers can affect business continuity, with clients of four-day workers potentially impacted as they switch between staffers and teams. On the question of expenditure, the "cost component" is "actually a bit more complex and nuanced than just saying it's a 20 percent saving," Dell's Moll told us.

Separate from the working hours issue is the question of in-person, hybrid, and fully remote work, which similar to a reduction in working hours is being seen by some as an antidote to the Great Resignation. Software companies appear to be adjusting their product sets for a post-pandemic world where people work from both their homes and the office.

Microsoft and Google have continued to push productivity software services via cloud, with Redmond promising something called "Windows 365 Offline."

Microsoft, incidentally, has productivity software as part of its Workplace Analytics platform called Week in the Life that discerns levels of collaboration among workers, among other things. It looks at aspects like "meeting hours" and "email hours" as well as "after-hours collaboration hours" although it notes that the intended purpose of monitoring "after-hours activity" is to "help identify employees who are at risk of getting overworked or have an unsustainable workload."

Meanwhile, the popularity of remote tools like VMware's Horizon virtualization platform is making them a target for opportunistic attackers.

Even as countries loosen COVID restrictions, HP has just spent $3.3 billion on office telco firm Poly, seen by many as a bet on the future of remote and hybrid work as the tech will help enterprises turn their meeting rooms into hybrid-capable spaces.

The fact that business is selling into the trend doesn't mean that executives have fully bought into the idea, though. A 31-country, 31,000-person survey last month showed a clear disconnect between the needs of managers and employees, with half of the leaders in IT roles reckoning their company needed full-time in-person staffers in the coming year while over half of the staffers already performing "hybrid" work (some in-office, some WFH) were actually considering a shift to fully remote work.

Dell said in August 2020 it anticipated 60 percent of its 160,000-strong workforce would not return to an office permanently after the pandemic ends.

Reg readers seem to feel that being given the ability to work from home is a good motivator, with most saying they preferred two days in the office, three at home. Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri, meanwhile, is in the other camp, and has said that "one or two days is a good amount" of "family time" and "perhaps five days is too much." We wonder why he would say that.

While a shorter working week and hybrid work are both creative ideas to address chronic staff shortages and issues with staff retention, we have to mention there's another method of persuasion: a bit of a salary top-up. What's your biggest motivator? More free time to enjoy what's left of your life; working in pajamas with a 30-second commute; or cold hard cash? Have your say in the comments below.

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Dell trials 4-day workweek in Netherlands as massive UK pilot starts - The Register