IBM fires up the big iron, Facebook hands out masks, Cisco splashes cash, and CDC gets an Azure-powered bot

Welcome to the first in what we at The Register fervently hope will be a short-lived series: it's time for a tech COVID-19 roundup. Big Blue and friends unleash the HPCs Everyone's favourite besuited services provider (and slinger of P45s) IBM has buddied up with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the …

[Not Enough Coffee]

"head of health at Facebook"

"Yes, you fell down the stairs, but no, i don't think your arm is broken. Keep working!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "head of health at Facebook"

If the serious brain injury the employee suffered before acceing the role isn't going to stop them, why should a broken arm?

[sanmigueelbeer]

where Robbins proffered freebie versions of the likes of WebEx

FYI to those who are not aware:

Cisco Webex Available Free in These Countries (COVID-19 Response)

Obtaining an Emergency COVID-19 AnyConnect License

[jelabarre59]

...Speaking through his social media orifice...

So IOW he was talking out his ass?

[Jimmy2Cows]

How exactly does one talk out of a donkey? One end gets a bit bitey, and the other end... just don't go there.

[Bitsminer]

Never let a good disaster go to waste

And it doesn't matter who said it. The big corps know it by heart.

[Denarius]

Might have a use

Noticed the TV media hacks clearly not listening to Oz pollies prattling and asking questions answered in set piece speech. A scripted Bot might deal with these incompetents and let pollies go back to trying to be less ineffectual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump Bot

Is there any chance the Azure bot could replace Trumps "covid team" meetings.

It just needs to learn a couple of phrases, link to the markets and tell us the exact opposite of what is really happening.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: Trump Bot

Google "Trump Speech Generator" and take your pick.

I'm encouraged by The Internet's response to the crisis

[tfewster]

There is, alas, no word on how well it will run Doom Eternal

I thought the El Reg standard benchmark was "But can it run Crysis?" [A more appropriate name for these times too]

[robot66]

Microsoft bot always brings to mind "clippy".

[Antron Argaiv]

"Big iron"

16 systems with more than 330 peta-FLOPS, 775,000 CPU cores and 34,000 GPUs

That's an impressive collection of computing power.

The Trump Speech Generator, however (surprised there's not one yetthere are several) runs on your grandfather's PC-XT, under DOS.

[BigAndos]

Cisco might be better off spending some of that money on webex infrastructure. We've found it has gone done or performed badly from 9am to 10am UK time every day like clockwork! I assume every techie in the UK is attempting to join their mandatory morning "stand up" at the same time...