ISMP.0

Today I woke a bit earlier than yesterday, so had time to do some work in the garden before a healthy breakfast - also eaten outdoors. It's only a 15 minute journey to the vast Montréal Convention Centre that easily swallowed the 1600 attendees of the 25th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP). 

After the introduction and prize ceremony, I was irritated by the plenary on quantum computing for optimization. With the goal of unimaginable computing power, the method of achieving it seems insanely hard. If/when quantum computers are built, they will be massively expensive and require huge amounts of energy to cool them to near absolute zero. Hence they would concentrate ultimate computing power in the hands of only the wealthiest institutions and countries, propagating inequality in the world. This runs totally contrary to the philosophy that I'm enacting with HiGHS, where I'm looking to create better open-source software for the world to run on conventional computers. 

After this, it was good to unwind with И over a tasty poke bowl. The two hours in the afternoon were a combination of supporting young academic friends and learning much from a presentation by a commercial optimization company, followed by sitting in on colleague J's talk in the knowledge that people would want to talk to us afterwards. 

I then headed off with И, our developer F,  and friend S, first for some expensive drinks in a lovely bar, and then a fair salad at a nearby restaurant. Once again I was so grateful that I'm able to hang out with smart young people.