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Recently, I found myself in Atlanta, Georgia, for several days and I knew that a visit to Waffle House was in my future. Its not difficult to find one since theyre as plentiful as pizza places in New York City. As of February 2024, there were 1,986 Waffle Houses in the United States and 439 of them or 22% are in Georgia. Viral videos of late night food fight shenanigans and wiseacre waitresses add to the appeal. Theyre open 24-hours a day, 365 days a year and I wonder how anyone keeps track of the front door key since the place is literally never locked. The Federal Emergency Management Agency even coined the term Waffle House Index because the restaurant is known to stay open during even the worst of bad weather. If a Waffle House is closed because of a hurricane, batten down the hatches, because its serious.

I found a Waffle House within walking distance of where I was staying and made my way to breakfast. Its only my third visit to the iconic eatery and I looked forward to it. Walking in, the bright fluorescent glow of lights greeted me as did the manager who looked younger than the Birkenstocks in my closet back home. Sit anywhere you want, he said, his voice cracking with youth.

I seated myself at a booth and Ms. Carol approached me with a menu. Her name tag said she had been with Waffle House for four years, but shes been of this earth much, much longer. She called me "sweetie" and reminded me of every waitress who worked at Mels Diner on Alice all rolled into one. When I ordered a Coca-Cola instead of coffee, her eyes narrowed as if to understand what kind of person she was dealing with. She took my order of scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese grits, and a biscuit and returned shortly with a Coke that was in a glass big enough to take a bath in. Minutes later, I watched another customer come in and ask the boy-manager which section was Ms. Carols and she proceeded to sit at the counter directly across from my booth. She was greeted warmly by our waitress who said, The usual? I longed to be a regular of Ms. Carol.

My food arrived and I was only slightly disappointed to see that cheese grits at Waffle House is just a half slice of American cheese haphazardly tossed onto the top of the bowl of grits. What was I expecting, Parmesan and fontina? I stirred it in and ate my breakfast as I watched Ms. Carol interact with her customers. It was like dinner and a show.

Staring at me wont make me move any faster.

Ms. Carol

Another man came in and sat down at the counter and immediately began looking for a server. His head was spinning around so much he looked like the girl in The Exorcist. He locked eyes on Ms. Carol who was wiping down another section of the counter. His impatience was palpable. She slowly looked up at him and then said something that filled my own longtime server's heart with joy: Staring at me wont make me move any faster.

She had a half smile on her face that made me think she was being funny, but one eyebrow raised that made it clear she was serious. It was a delicate balance of both. The man realized his place and Ms. Carol finished what she was doing before going up to him. I dont know if he too was a regular, but it was clear that she was the one in charge. This was the Waffle House energy I wanted.

Some servers might have shriveled at that mans menacing gaze, but Ms. Carol understood that he needed her just as much as she needed him. Respect is a two-way street and she made sure he knew it.

It was now raining outside and when Ms. Carol cleared my plate I told her I was going to have to wait a bit until the rain slowed down since I had walked. Stay as long as you want, hon. You want another Coke? I declined the offer since I had already consumed more than enough. It soon stopped raining, I tipped 40% and went on my way. Those cheese grits really stuck with me, but not as much as Ms. Carol.

Read the rest here:
Waffle House Waitresses Are the Life Coaches We All Need - Food & Wine

Meet the 17 investors and entrepreneurs who made ten-digit fortunes on the blockchain. By John Hyatt, Forbes Staff

The crypto winter is over. Bitcoin has more than doubled over the past 12 months, hitting an all-time high of $73,000 in March after the U.S. legalized bitcoin-pegged exchange-traded funds. The total value of all outstanding cryptocurrencies increased by 170%, adding some $1.6 trillion in market value over the past 12 months, according to CoinGecko.

Thats helped make at least 17 people crypto billionaires, according to Forbes 2024 Worlds Billionaires list, up from nine crypto billionaires last year. These 17 investors and entrepreneurs are worth a collective $93 billion, between their estimated crypto asset holdings, publicly disclosed stock holdings and private assets. Thats more than double the $37 billion in collective crypto billionaire wealth last year.

For the third year running, Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of crypto exchange Binance, is cryptos wealthiest person. Despite pleading guilty to U.S. money laundering charges in November, CZ, as hes known, is now worth an estimated $33 billion, up from $10.5 billion last year. That makes him the biggest crypto gainer in dollar terms since last year and the 50th-wealthiest person in the world. The bulk of his fortune comes from his majority stake in Binance, which remains the industrys largest global trading venue by volume.

Two of this years biggest gainers can thank investors in their publicly traded companies. Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, a software firm that has made heavy investments in bitcoin, is now worth an estimated $4.4 billion, compared to $760 million last year. Brian Armstrong, CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, is worth an estimated $11.2 billion, up from just $2.2 billion last year. Shares of Coinbase and MicroStrategy are each up more than fourfold over the past 12 months.

Making their debut on Forbes annual billionaires ranking are Giancarlo Devasini, Paolo Ardoino, Jean-Louis van der Velde and Stuart Hoegner, four large shareholders of Tether, a controversial but wildly profitable stablecoin issuer. Cryptos three-comma club also includes familiar faces like the Winklevoss twins (of Facebook fame), venture capitalist and Nikki Haley booster Tim Draper, and Ripple cofounder and budding space entrepreneur Jed McCaleb.

The two Stanford alumni cofounded Alchemy, a Web3 infrastructure provider whose developer suite powers crypto and blockchain projects, in 2020. Investors valued Alchemy at more than $10 billion in early 2022. Today the company is worth about $5.6 billion, based on secondary sales of private shares tracked by data provider Notice.co.

Draper is a venture capitalist and early Bitcoin investor. In 2014, he bought 29,656 bitcoins confiscated by U.S. Marshals from the shuttered Silk Road black market for $18.7 million, or $632 per coin. They are now worth $2 billion. He has also made dozens of VC investments in companies ranging from Tesla to Theranos.

Stuart Hoegner has served as general counsel for Tether and its sister company Bitfinex since 2014, and he holds an estimated 13% stake. A Canadian certified accountant, Hoegner began his career at Ernst & Young before starting Gaming Counsel Professional Corporation, a boutique law practice that catered to online gambling and cryptocurrency clients. He was also previously a director of compliance and deputy general counsel at Excapsa Software, an online poker company that became embroiled in a software-facilitated cheating scandal.

Tether has been accused of facilitating money laundering for terrorist groups and criminal organizations, including human trafficking rings that run Pig Butchering crypto scams. (Tether says it follows stringent Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering protocols and remains committed to expeditiously working with law enforcement to identify criminal activity.) In 2021, Tether and its sister company Bitfinex paid $18.5 million to settle fraud charges with the New York Attorney Generals office, which alleged Tether had overstated its cash reserves.

An early bitcoin investor, Novogratz heads crypto investment firm and merchant bank Galaxy Digital Holdings, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and has about $6 billion in assets under management. His stake in the company is worth about $2 billion. Prior to his career in crypto, Novogratz worked on Wall Street. He spent a decade at Goldman Sachs and then led a macro-focused fund for private equity firm Fortress Investment Group, later becoming the firms president.

The Winklevoss twins, notorious for their dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over Facebooks founding (as depicted in the 2010 movie The Social Network), have most of their wealth tied up in bitcoin, which they first bought in 2013, and are believed to have large stashes of ethereum and Filecoin as well. The Winklevii also control 75% of Gemini, the crypto exchange they founded together, which aims to compete with the likes of Coinbase and Binance. Outside investors last valued Gemini at over $7 billion in 2021, but Forbes now estimates that Gemini is worth less than $1 billion because its trading volumes have plummeted amid investor and government lawsuits stemming from the 2022 collapse of its interest-bearing program, Gemini Earn.

Another early crypto pioneer, McCaleb created Mt. Gox, the first major bitcoin exchange, in 2010. He sold it a year later, before it was infamously hacked. Next, McCaleb cofounded Ripple in 2012, but soon left over disagreements with fellow founders. Most of his wealth comes from selling much of the original 9 billion XRP he pocketed as a Ripple cofounder. He sold the last of his coins in 2022. (McCaleb also founded Stellar, a Ripple competitor, in 2014.) These days, he spends his time and financial resources on Vast, a space exploration company that hes backing.

An early investor in bitcoin, Roszak made his first purchases in 2010. Most of his wealth comes from early bets on cryptocurrencies, including ethereum and BNB, Binances native token. Roszak also runs Bloq, a blockchain startup that invests in other crypto ventures and consults on projects.

Ehrsam founded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase in 2012 with Brian Armstrong. He left the company in 2017 but remains on the board and still owns about 5% of its stock. In 2018, he cofounded Paradigm, a cryptocurrency investment firm, which now has more than $8 billion in assets under management.

Coinbase generated $2.9 billion of revenue last year, down from $3.1 billion in 2022 and $7.8 billion in 2021, the last time crypto prices spiked. But the company has returned to profitability, generating net income of $100 million, compared to a $2.6 billion net loss in 2022.

Larsen cofounded Ripple in 2012 to facilitate international payments using the XRP cryptocurrency. He stepped down as Ripple CEO in late 2016 but remains executive chairman. He holds an 18% stake in Ripple, which investors value at $3.8 billion, according to recent secondary market data shared with Forbes. He also has a sizable stash of XRPover 2.8 billion tokensand nearly $1 billion of cash and investments, per Forbes estimates, largely from prior XRP sales.

As Tethers former CEO, van der Velde operates as a figurehead responsible for maintaining Tethers high-level strategic relationships with banks and regulators, and owns an estimated 20% of the company. He left the Netherlands in 1985 to attend university in Taiwan, and subsequently cofounded several IT and tech startups in Asia before joining Tether. He lives in Hong Kong.

Ardoino serves as Tethers CEO, its public face and owns an estimated 20% of the company. He joined Tethers sister company, Bitfinex, as a senior software developer in 2014. Ardoino previously worked in startups as a computer programmer.

Saylor is the biggest crypto billionaire gainer, in percentage terms, on this years list. Shares of MicroStrategy, the software firm Saylor started in the 1990s and refashioned into a bitcoin investment vehicle in recent years, are up nearly 500% from last year. The company now owns about 193,000 bitcoins, making it the largest corporate holder of bitcoin in the world, according to its CFO.

Then theres Saylors personal bitcoin stashSaylor said in 2021 he holds 17,732 bitcoins that he bought at an average price of $9,882 per coinand he is in the process of cashing out about $200 million of MicroStrategy stock, which he announced at the beginning of the year.

Devasini is the CFO and likely the largest individual shareholder of Tether, cryptos largest issuer of stablecoinsa form of cryptocurrency that is pegged to the U.S. dollar or other hard currency and used as a medium of exchange. Over 100 billion Tether tokens have been minted. Buoyed by higher interest rates, Tether generated $6.2 billion in profit last year from the interest it generates on customers collateral. Devasini owns an estimated 47% stake in Tether, which Forbes values by applying the average price-to-earnings multiples of a group of publicly traded mid-tier banks and asset managers.

Armstrong, who cofounded Coinbase in 2013 with Fred Ehrsam, is the companys largest individual shareholder, with an 18% stake. The crypto exchanges stock is up 50% year-to-date, and over three-fold since last year, giving it a market capitalization of nearly $60 billion. Since November, Armstrong has sold more than $170 million worth of Coinbase stock through an automated 10b5-1 trading plan.

Zhao, who goes by CZ, agreed to personally pay $200 million in fines last year to settle federal money laundering charges brought by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Binance agreed to pay an additional $4.5 billion.) He also agreed to step down as CEO of crypto exchange Binance and is barred from involvement with Binance for three years as part of his guilty plea. (Zhaos sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 30). Yet it hardly left a dent in his fortune. His stake in Binanceestimated to be 90%, based on corporate documents and conversations with former employeesis worth some $32.5 billion.

Binance remains the largest crypto exchange in the world by trading volume, generating an estimated $9 billion of revenue last year, according to Forbes analysis. To estimate Binances market value, Forbes applied the price-to-sales multiple of Coinbase, a publicly traded peer, then applied further discounts to account for Binances concentrated ownership, the possibility of further regulatory enforcement and key-man risks following CZs departure.

More here:

The Richest Crypto And Bitcoin Billionaires In The World 2024 - Forbes

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As the first wave of storms from a major atmospheric river rolled into sunny Southern California in early February, Kevin Tran knew he'd be staying late the following evening after heavy winds and rainfall were expected to hit his Reseda restaurant.

The Sherman Way strip-mall location was likely to be safe from flooding it's just that Kevin knows he has to stay about 90 minutes later than usual when it rains because for his customers, it's gonna be a soup day.

His wife and business partner Lynne tells me it takes 18 hours for the spices to come together to make their pho and lemongrass broths.

Rainy days means that they almost nearly sell out. So they have to start the overnight process again to up their reserves for the following days.

Kevin is keenly aware of his customers needs and ordering habits.

Nobody wants salad on a rainy day, and nobody is eating soup on a very hot day except for one customer." Kevin pauses for a moment.

"Victor. He's been coming to Vinh Loi for 18 years, only eats soup, even in the scorching 110-degree weather."

Bun bo hue from Vinh Loi Tofu in Reseda.

Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

Vinh Loi is a star of the vegan scene in L.A. When Kevin and Lynne opened their business in 2002, they exclusively made tofu in the space, but since have branched out to offer everything from banh mi sandwiches to duck noodle salads and a curry udon stir fry. Kevin calls his cuisine "strictly Vietnamese food, but my style.

Vinh Loi is a casual cafe. No reservations necessary. The orange and green walls display large photos of the menu items. News clippings, accolades, and recognitions from the City of Los Angeles and the California State Senate are hanging on the walls. You sit down wherever you choose, but your order is at the discretion of the chef.

The night that I come in, Kevin is wearing a t-shirt that says "I pick, you eat."

He asks me: "Brother have you eaten? are you hungry?"

Sure.

How spicy?"

Medium.

How hungry?

Medium.

He looks me up and down and says, "OK, I'll pick the food."

There are more than 300 items on the menu. But the food changes every two weeks theres something new and different.

Kevin walks into the kitchen and brings out the meal he has picked for me mock crispy duck on top of rice and noodles with vegetables. The duck is made from wheat gluten, seitan. Its delicious.

Combo teriyaki duck noodles fried rice from Vinh Loi Tofu in Reseda.

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

Kevin and Lynnes tofu-making journey began after Kevin's grandma passed away. Their family observed a traditional 49-day Vietnamese Buddhist grieving process, which includes abstaining from meat.

During this time they were driving all over L.A. and Orange County, trying tofu from many different places. "We were tasting tofu everywhere." Lynne says. Some hits and misses, but they realized their best tofu was made in the traditional way.

Kevin said to his wife, I love tofu, honey, maybe we should open a factory?

At the time Kevin had been selling high-end furniture in the South Bay and Lynne was working in the film industry. Kevin says he sold furniture to pay student loans, but food is my passion.

Lynne says it wasn't easy. We make tofu in the traditional old-school way. The tofu making process is very tedious and time consuming.

It starts with soaking the soy beans overnight, then coming back the following morning at 5 a.m. and brining it. Once ready, it has to be cooked, and then water is added back to it. Then add whatever seasonings like their tofu block with lemon grass. We sold it with different flavors like: plain tofu, tofu lemongrass, tofu with mushroom."

Reseda is home to a vibrant Vietnamese community, with markets, restaurants, bakeries, restaurants, doctors, accountant, notary publics, and a Buddhist temple. So it made sense to Kevin and Lynne to open Vinh Loi Tofu there.

Vinh Loi Tofu in Reseda

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

They had been making tofu for a year and a half when one day a customer came in and asked Kevin what he was eating.

It looked good. It was his vegan version of Bun Bo Hue, a traditional Vietnamese spicy beef soup.

After that people began to ask to taste other things on the menu. "What do you mean menu? I serve tofu, says Kevin. Slowly one thing after another and the menu becomes massive. I love to create. I love to cook. I love to eat. I wanted to do something for my customers.

Duck and dumplings bahn mi sandwich from Vinh Loi Tofu in Reseda.

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

Kevin points to a 2009 L.A. Times article and photo gallery, which used to be on the wall but it's now ostensibly out of sight on top of a fridge.

People started coming here since the article. A year later, the Discovery Channel came through and basically gave me a year of free advertising. Since then Kevin says it's been up and up.

"We've been very fortunate, Lynne says, for the majority of our customers it's their lifestyle. It's not a trend or a fad.

Lynne describes a multigenerational clientele. There's beauty in a restaurant. We get to know families by name. Lot of them come in once as a date, and then later as a couple, and then later with their children.

There are a lot of people in the vegan community, but nowadays even meat-eaters want to taste, says Kevin. In people's minds a block of tofu has no taste. But the minute they taste this food, they realize they can be vegan every day.

Lynne says were a strong believer in morals and values. I'm always sourcing the freshest produce. Putting our name on a product, and making sure you deliver. Focus on quality over quantity."

Kevin says "my job is to make sure that the food tastes real and healthy. You have to put your heart and soul, 110% into a restaurant."

Though Lynne says that Kevin can also be the vegan version of Gordon Ramsay a real pain in the ass.

Kevin admits it. Trust me I own my restaurant, I'm picky. I love food so much. It can't be a 9, it needs to be a 10. If the cooks palette is off, itll be wrong for the customer.

His zeal for perfection has led Kevin to other activities like triathlons. He says cooking is my hobby running is for when I need a change.

He competes as the Tofu Robot, a name given to him by a customer because he does things that only robots can do. Humans can't do it."

Kevin says he got into these massive multi-day 100-mile races because "I hung out with too many vegans, all badasses, looking good. I kinda wanted to understand my customers.

He says he runs because "I need to know what is in people's minds. They're crazy. I have to learn from what they did. See how vegan food works on the body in those conditions."

At the end of the day Kevin says he never wants to do business with meat.

I feel like whatever I do. I am happy. Animal is happy. People are happy because they had healthy food to eat. And making people happy makes me happy at the same time. You have nothing to lose. Everybody win/win.

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Vinh Loi: A Family Business Built On The Pure Love Of Tofu - LAist

Mila and Bell last Friday announced an 18-month collaborative project to apply deep learning neural network algorithms to Bell's systems and data. Bell has made significant investments to develop extensive data analytics capabilities and AI applications in multiple areas of its operations, and this collaboration is the latest step in advancing its AI expertise.

Mila researchers will work alongside Bell's Machine Learning and AI teams to build on those investments by using cutting-edge deep learning neural network techniques to identify opportunities for improving business performance and customer experience.

These neural network deep learning models, inspired by the human brain, teach computers to recognize complex patterns in pictures, text, sounds and other data to produce accurate insights and predictions.

By advancing its understanding of deep learning AI techniques, Bell will continue to enhance its customer experience and accelerate its transition from a traditional telecommunications company to a technology services leader. As part of the collaboration, Bell and Mila will write a paper highlighting their technical findings in support of global AI advancement.

Stphane Ltourneau, Executive Vice President of Mila

Mila is very pleased to work with Bell and apply its renowned expertise in deep learning to the telecommunications sector. Through this collaboration, we look forward to combining Mila's research capabilities with Bell's extensive industry knowledge in order to highlight and harness AI's potential in this evolving field.

Michel Richer, SVP, Enterprise Solutions, Data Engineering & AI, Bell Canada

Becoming an AI leader is key to our transition from a traditional telco to a tech services leader. Working with a global leader like Mila right here in Montral is a great opportunity for Bell to benefit from leading-edge researchers, advance our AI and Cloud expertise, further improve the customer experience and establish our role as a technology services leader.

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Bell to Deploy Deep Learning AI on Systems and Data in 18-Month Partnership With Mila - The Fast Mode

Early quantum computing pioneer D-Wave again asserted that at least for D-Wave the commercial quantum era has begun. Speaking at its first in-person Analyst Day last week, CEO Alan Baratz touted the companys steady technical progress, assembled a few key customers to recount their D-Wave experience, and closed with a Q&A that provided details on its go-to-market approach and the costs to customers. The overall message of the day was a close reprise of Baratzs Qubit23 message last January D-Wave is open for commercial business.

Heres the Baratz pitch:

Many of you have heard me say this before, but its a very important point, D wave is absolutely unique in the quantum industry. Not only were we the first, but we are the only commercial quantum computing company. We have businesses that are either working with us today to develop applications to benefit their business operations, or they have moved those applications into production, and their businesses are benefiting today. Moreover, the quantum industries is absolutely at a watershed moment, said Baratz.

We are now at the point where quantum is transitioning from research experimentation to actual in production business support. But theres only one company that can say that and thats D-Wave because were the only company in the world that has quantum computers, hybrid solvers and quantum services that are able to support business applications in production. Everybody else in the quantum industry is still working on developing their systems. Thats a critically important point. That also means that D-Wave is the company that is single handedly building the quantum marketplace, because were the only ones that can do it.

These are broad claims, and many in the quantum industry disagree, even as widespread debate continues over when (and how) quantum computing will deliver value.

D-Wave, founded in 1999, has long championed a form of quantum computing quantum annealing (QA) that works quite differently from the gate-based approaches being pursued by the majority of quantum computer developers. The company also has a new gate development effort, but Baratz believes those systems are far from ready for everyone Ill say it again, we are at least seven years away from the gate model system being able to solve a real-world problem because theres just no evidence that a gate model system can solve a real-world problem without error correction.

The big bet D-Waves big bet is that quantum annealing, which does not require active error correction (EC), is the only current quantum option; its been shown to be effective for certain classes of problems, especially optimization. For two decades, D-Wave has been steadily improving the characteristics of its machines including coherence times and connectivity. Its systems support higher qubit counts because they dont need EC. The company has developed hybrid quantum solvers for a variety of application areas, and it now says it is verticalizing efforts around the long hanging fruit. Critically, it has a few customers using its systems for at least some production-environment jobs with broader roll-outs underway.

It also has pressure, not least from financial markets. In 2022, D-Wave went public (NYSE-QBTS) via the SPAC route, along with a handful of others, and twice faced delisting.

Theres a lot to unpack in the D-Wave journey. Is this D-Waves first-mover advantage moment, as Baratz declared, and the start of quantum annealing going mainstream while gate-based system continue development? Or something else?

Much of the material covered in the meeting wasnt new having become public over the course of the past couple of years. That said, it represents D-Waves self-view today, and while this was an Analyst Day intended to impress its audience, D-Wave has put many pieces to the QA puzzle together. Is it enough?

Before digging into a few meeting highlights (technology, use cases, go-to-market strategies and user costs) look at the three slides below (click on to enlarge) describing D-Wave position today. (Link to video of D-Waves Analyst Day)

Lets start with technology.

Unconstrained by active error correction, D-Wave systems have always had higher qubit counts. The first-gen Advantage system, now in use, has 5000 qubits. Key technology challenges have included increasing qubit connectivity, extending coherence times, and incorporating error mitigation. Advantage2, expected in 2023/24, will have 7000 qubits. By comparison, most gate based QPUs have far fewer (mostly single digits to 100ish). More qubits and connectivity mean larger, more complex problems can be mapped onto the processor. Better coherence means better answers.

Coincident with the analyst day, D-Wave announced it has calibrated a1,200+ qubit Advantage2 prototype, which will be available (Q1) in the companys Leap real-time quantum cloud service.

The new Advantage2 prototype features 1,200+ qubits and 10,000+ couplers, double the number of qubits and couplers over thepreviously released Advantage2 prototype. D-wave reported benchmarks demonstrate substantial advancements across a number of performance metrics compared to the Advantage quantum processing unit (QPU), including:

D-Wave says the new Advantage2 prototype is 20 times faster at solving spin glasses, an important family of classically hard optimization problem: Recent research has shown that compared to the Advantage system, the Advantage2 prototype grows quantum correlations twice as fast in materials simulation and shows significantly reduced errors in quantum simulation tasks. Further, it shows improved performance on constraint satisfaction problems, with the Advantage2 prototype beating the Advantage system 90% of the time.

An enhanced fabrication stack was developed to achieve the gains. Advantage2 system will mark the companys sixth-generation quantum system. Baratz noted the 1200-qubit Advantage2 prototype is already more powerful than our current 5000 qubit events. He also cited a recent Nature paper that showed while we are doing quantum annealing, we get a significant speedup over classical systems on hard optimization problems, in particular a polynomial speed up, not an exponential speed up.

The companys relatively new gate-based development program is also proceeding. D-Wave has chosen to work with fluxonium qubits and recently reported, manufactured and tested fluxonium qubits in a 2-dimensional circuit geometry. The measured coherence properties, with relaxation times in excess of 100 microseconds, are comparable to the current state-of-the-art for such qubits. In addition, the measured effective temperature of its fluxonium, 18 millikelvin, is among the best that has been reported in the scientific literature to date for superconducting qubits.

Baratz said D-Wave has been able leverage much of the technology developed for quantum annealing for its gate-based efforts, including for example, programming and readout able to achieve readout 20 times faster than anything thats ever been shown on gate model systems in the edge.

Theyre all using something called dispersive readout, which is not a great technology. We have already developed much better technology for doing that annealing, and its directly applicable to gate, and weve been able to show that, according to Baratz. The next step, he said, is to bring together the flexibility and high coherence of fluxonium qubits with the control capabilities that we developed to build a logical gate. Weve already designed the mask for those next step is to fabricate and test.

Turning quantum technology into practical solutions, deployed in a production environment, and, of course delivering sufficiently superior performance to classical systems to warrant the cost and effort is everyones goal. The projects reviewed by D-Wave customers covered a range of optimization activities are at various stages of roll-out: Pattison Food Group (E-commerce driver and delivery scheduling); Davidson Technologies (radar scheduling); IPG (tour scheduling); Vinci Energies (HVAC design).

Perhaps the furthest along is work by food products giant Pattison, presented by Lindsay Dukowski, senior manager, delivery scheduling. What began as a workforce scheduling project in 2020 was briefly paused by the Pandemic. It morphed into a successful ecommerce auto delivery scheduling application, now in use.

Of the initial project, Dukowski said, Across 13 different collective bargaining agreements, the rules to create a schedule were extremely complicated, and labor intensive, as well. So, we were looking at Workday (ERP solution), for instance, a leading application and even they couldnt solve this problem. I was actually leading that project at the time. We decided to partner with D-Wave to try to solve that problem.

Think scheduling how many cashiers you need, how many people in a bakery or the deli, and all of the scheduling rules and constraints, she said, including all the labor rules such as whos available, whos qualified to work in every department, and years of experience.

It takes between 8-to-12 hours a week per store to just complete. Once thats done, we put it into our workforce management application. Because these schedules are usually generated about three weeks in advance, theres a lot of last minute changes and edit sick time, new hires, terminations that have to be taken into consideration. All of that maintenance takes another 8-to-12 hours. If you think about 300 stores, its actually pretty expensive for us.

Pattison did a POC in a non-unionized store in July 2020 that was successful. Our leadership [said], youve proven you can solve this problem. Lets roll it out in the other stores (unionized) to see if you can actually really do this in a more complex environment.

COVIDs arrival changed the plan. You can imagine there are stores we had a lot of people calling in sick, a lot of people that werent willing to come in because they had family members that were at risk. COVID was crazy for the grocery industry, for every industry, but for grocery especially. We decided to kind of put that on pause, recalled Dukowski.

Pattison had e-commerce (order online for delivery) in about ~20-30 percent of its stores was pushing to expand that to all its stores. We decided to pivot and solve the e-commerce driver auto scheduling; so a very similar problem to coming up with the schedule at retail where youve got demand for drivers to deliver to multiple locations at the same time.

That project became QEDA Quantum Ecommerce Driver Automated scheduling. She recalls that e-commerce was in ~100 stores and 3-4 people that were manually creating these schedules every week and it took about 80 hours.

We went through the labor agreements. My team actually read through all of the documents. Then we met with the schedulers to find out the requirements. We converted those requirements to math equations, we built data pipelines to pull in all the necessary data from the source systems, converted that to an optimization code. We use the hybrid solver from D-Wave, did some code debugging and parameter tuning, outputted some schedules and then just kind of iterated the process until till it worked, Dukowski said.

The weekly manual effort for scheduling creation was reduced by 80% from 80 hours to 15. And that time is really for the maintenance and the edits that need to be made. Its difficult. We didnt try to solve that problem with this, it was just lets generate a schedule. Initially, the runtime per schedule is about two minutes, and then we generate 42 schedules each week. So, if you think about the timeline, we started in April, we did a pilot in August, and moved into production, October 2022.

I believe that at that time, we became the first the first company in North America to go live with a production system using quantum, said Dukowski.

Pattison has since returned to the workforce management application. We took the demand, we automated all of those scheduling rules, using the same project methodology and essentially the same tech stack to build a new model and pull in additional data. So, we have some new data pipelines we had to build, but leverage the work that we did with the E commerce driver scheduling, and were able to eliminate that eight to 12 hours, she said.

The scheduling challenge is one of those application areas D-Wave is currently focusing what Baratz called the low hanging fruit because the tools, hybrid solvers, and D-Wave quantum computer can effectively handle them. We are targeting manufacturing, logistics, and doubling down on key use cases such as workforce scheduling, resource allocation, and vehicle routing he said.

These projects remain non-trivial and take time, as indicated by the Pattison example. Baratz provided some detail around customer engagements.

Over the course of the last year and a half to two years since we launched our professional services organization, weve now done over 25 proofs of concept with customers. Were now at the point where they are starting to move into production [and] we expect a few more over the course of the next three months. This is a really important transition for us because of our business model. Ultimately, we want to focus on quantum computing as a service, because that allows us to build recurring revenue. And that puts us in a much more predictable revenue growth position going forward, said Baratz.

In Q&A, Baratz was asked to distinguish and contrast the overall 70 commercial customers with the ~25 POC cited earlier.

Keep in mind that not all customers [that] engage us do POC. We have a lot of customers that we affectionately call DIY customers, right? They come in, they buy in the old days of time and in new days a developer seat and then try to build the application themselves. What we know is that the customers that try to do it, themselves have a much lower probability of success than when they engage us in a POC, said Baratz.

Professional services helps them to figure out how to properly leverage the quantum computer, how to properly map the application, but as we go through it we can help them understand how to do so it doesnt always have to be us, he said. A lot of those 70 customers are those DIY customers. One of the things we are focused on is going back to them, and trying to move them to a POC, so that we can help them be more successful.

The standard pricing for proof of concept is about $350,000, said Baratz. We also have a $70,000, demonstrator engagement thats a one month engagement with a demonstration thats really quick and dirty to kind of feel out the solution to your problem. You cant run it because not linked to your environment. But you give us some data. We figure out how to solve a problem on your data, leveraging quantum hybrid solvers, said Baratz.

Moving into production is a deeper engagement. If the customer wants our help in trying to move to production, thats typically a custom agreement.

D-Wave has two production offerings.

Asked who owns the application developed with POCs and if D-Wave is able add newly-developed applications to its library, Baratz said, Wed love to have them, but our customers would not sometimes. Basically, what weve done is weve defined an interface, and typically what we say is anything thats developed below that interface we own. For example, if we make a change to a hybrid solver to support your application we own that; anything above that interface you own so typically, if the application is owned by our customers. But not always, sometimes weve been able to retain that.

As outlined by Baratz, D-Wave clearly has big ambitions and believes the timing is right. He notes that quantum annealing, sometimes disparaged in the past, has recently got a boost from government with favorable language in recent National Defense Authorization Act Weve already started getting calls from various defense agencies saying we need to learn more. The last call we got was from the army engineering research lab, he said.

Stay tuned.

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Eyes on the Quantum Prize D-Wave Says its Time is Now - HPCwire

If youre considering going vegan, or if youre simply interested in the movement, here are the best Netflix shows for vegans, and about veganism.

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Just in time for Veganuary the challenge to follow a plant-based diet for the month of January Netflix has released a docuseries based on scientific research presenting the positive health benefits of a plant-based diet. Its a hard-hitting series thats already provoking much reaction and debate, yet its far from being the only small- or big-screen project to tackle the sometimes sensitive subject of veganism. Here are five shows you should watch if youre considering going vegan, or if youre simply interested in the movement.

[Hero Image Credit: Appolo Films / Nation Earth / polyband Medien GmbH]

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This is the latest documentary project to demonstrate the benefits of a plant-based diet. Recently released on Netflix, this docuseries is based on the results of a Stanford University study released last November, which compared the impact of a vegan diet versus a meat-eating diet in 22 pairs of identical twins. Landing just in time for the Veganuary challenge, Louie Psihoyos film sets out to highlight the influence of lifestyle factors, more than genetics, on health. Leading figures from the vegan world, such as star New York chef Daniel Humm, who went vegan in 2021, and the founder of the alt-meat startup Impossible Foods, feature in this project hailing the benefits of a plant-based diet.

Ten years ago, Netflix released a documentary highlighting the consequences of intensive livestock farming. Kip Andersens film uses shock and sensational tactics to expose the role of giant farms in climate disruption, species extinction and water resource depletion. With its investigative format, the film above all encourages political reflection, calling out public authorities and environmental associations alike, denouncing their lack of commitment to finding sustainable solutions.

In 2021, the French comedian Fabrice Ebou used veganism as a theme in this darkly humorous and irreverent cartoonish comedy starring the actress, Marina Fos. The comedian plays a butcher who mistakenly kills a vegan activist, then ends up selling the body as meat in a bid to conceal the murder. But the commercial success of his customer-pleasing preparation gives the butcher new ideas

Narrated by the actor Joaquin Phoenix, who makes no secret of his vegan diet especially since he has lent his support to the Veganuary challenge this documentary shocked viewers when it was released in 2005, using hidden cameras to show the real fate of farm animals. The subject covers not only the animals we eat, but also those used in the fur industry, medical research and entertainment, such as circuses. Shaun Monsons film illustrates all the consequences of animal exploitation.

In 2011, the filmmaker Marisa Miller Wolfson unveiled her documentary project following three New Yorkers, self-confessed lovers of meat and cheese, who agreed to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks. The aim of the project was to show just how difficult this choice can be on a day-to-day basis, requiring perseverance and tenacity.

This story is published via AFP Relaxnews.

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5 Netflix shows that tackle the sensitive subject of veganism - Lifestyle Asia Bangkok