Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2020
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smarter Traffic LIghts
Some examples of complex systems and data control.
A line of green traffic lights on Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile Smarter Traffic Lights, Calmer Commuters
Paul Stenquist, in the NYT
Artificial intelligence and other technologies…From The Eponymous Pickle
Netflix is Shelf Selling with AI
When I first saw the long rows of 'content' on a Netflix selection shelf. I immediately thought of a supermarket shelf, which I had much experience with. This was not alphabetic or random. And certainly not stationary.…
From Computational Complexity
Quarterly Th. Wksp `at' Northwestern, and thoughts inspired by it
On the Northwestern CS Theory Group there is a set of Quarterly Theory Workshops. There is one coming up on Dec 17-18, 2020, called the Junior Theorists Workshop. Take a look and possibly go to it! Because it is virtual you1)…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Is The End Near?
Queen’s Gambit and more Kenneth Regan is my partner here at GLL and a dear friend. He is a longtime faculty member in computer science at the University of Buffalo, a longtime fan of the Buffalo NFL football team, and a longtime…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at Companies in the Autonomous Race
Good overview of companies and efforts underway
The Autonomous Vehicle Companies in the Self-Driving Race in nanalyze
" ... While we’ve covered some of the most well-funded autonomous vehicle startups in the past, it’s been way…From The Eponymous Pickle
Drone for Exploring Caves, and other Tight Spaces and Situations
Drones that fold and unfold to enter and explore. Remember having to deal with that in one of my few caving efforts. Also includes discussion of their acting as swarms. Quite interesting detail here:
Ridley Scott inspiresBy…From The Eponymous Pickle
State of Data Onboarding
Newly brought to my attention, surveys and analysis, of data use.
Our vision could be summed up no better than by the great poet, D.H. Lawrence:
For God’s sake, let us be humans. Not monkeys minding machines.
Humans vs…From The Eponymous Pickle
Updates on Echo Auto
Have been a user of Echo Auto in the car for some time. There were early glitches, but it is working well now. They are just announcing some new capabilities:
Echo Auto, Alexa in the Car
Alexa is always getting smarter, andSee…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
ARM MacBook vs Intel MacBook
Up to yesterday, my laptop was a large 15-inch MacBook Pro. It contains an Intel Kaby Lake processor (3.8 GHz). I just got a brand-new 13-inch 2020 MacBook Pro with Apple’s M1 ARM chip (3.2 GHz). How do they compare? I like precise…
From insideHPC
HPC-AI Advisory Council Announces Student Teams Competing in the 11th Annual ISC-HPCAIAC Student Cluster Competition
Sunnywale, CA — The HPC-AI Advisory Council (HPCAIAC), in collaboration with the ISC Group, organizers of Europe’s premier HPC forum, today announced the annual team selections for the 2021 ISC-HPCAIAC Student Cluster Competition…
From insideHPC
AWS and Arm Demonstrate Electronic Design Automation in the Cloud
Seattle – Amazon Web Services has announced that Arm, a global leader in semiconductor design and silicon intellectual property development and licensing, will leverage AWS for its cloud use, including the vast majority of its…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NIST: Quantum Bits Can be Self Correcting?
Could be a really big thing, depending on the context and consequences.
Error-Prone Quantum Bits Could Correct Themselves, NIST Physicists Show
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Physicists at the U.S. National Institute…From insideHPC
Quantum Corp. Says ActiveScale Meets Consistency Requirements for Amazon S3 Compatibility
San Jose — Dec. 10, 2020 — Quantum Corp. (NASDAQ: QMCO) today announced that its ActiveScale object storage platform automatically complies with the new strong consistency requirements for compatibility with Amazon Simple Storage…
From BLOG@CACM
The Year-Round Joys and Benefits of Open Source Software
One of the things that makes us programmers feel warm and fuzzy is open source software. Companies support open source too. Why give something away for free? A lot of individuals contribute open source code out of a genuine sense…
From The Eponymous Pickle
TaintDroid: Information Flow on Smartphones
Brought to my attention as part of a broader study:
TaintDroid: an information-flow tracking system for realtime privacy monitoring on smartphones
Authors: William Enck, Peter Gilbert, Byung-Gon Chun, Landon P. Cox, Jaeyeon…From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Newly Identified Ichthyosaur Species Probably Ate Squid
This is a deep-diving species that “fed on small prey items such as squid.”
Academic paper.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting…From The Eponymous Pickle
Training AI in Four Bits
Its happening now. Consider too that smartphones can be the source of much data that will be used to train such systems.
Tiny four-bit computers are now all you need to train AI in TechnologyReview
Powerful neural networks could…From insideHPC
8 European Associations Commit to TransContinuum Initiative for EU R&D Cross-domain Collaboration
December 11, 2020 – Coordinated by the ETP4HPC, the TransContinuum Initiative (TCI) is the union of related digital technologies which offers solutions for the operation of complex data workflow systems. In this continuum, HPC…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mechanical Turk and AI: Invisible Workers
We used Mechanical Turk for a number of small projects, especially for getting initial data that was reasonable for first order testing. Never for later predictive analysis. Our look at it was that they were reasonably paid…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Railway Delays
Interesting application. Consider data availability, accuracy and variability of prediction.
Predicting British railway delays using artificial intelligence by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Over the past 20 years…From insideHPC
Cobham Gaisler and fentISS Deepen Collaboration around RISC-V
Valencia, Spain — Cobham Gaisler, a leading space design center of Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions (CAES), announced that fent Innovative Software Solutions (fentISS), a developer of software solutions specifically designed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google AI Describes AutoML for Time Series
Most our careers in the big enterprise involved working with time series. Sales, Shipments delivered, Advertising Dollars, marketing spends ... forecast plans and predictions. A favorite quote was 'the forecast is wrong'…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Softbank Sells Controlling Stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai
Interesting development. In TechExplore. Had not recalled their connection with Google.
SoftBank sells controlling stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai
Japan's SoftBank Group will sell an 80 percent stake in robotics firm Boston…From insideHPC
insideHPC Guide to QCT Platform-on-Demand Designed for Converged Workloads – Part 3
In this insideHPC technology guide, “insideHPC Guide to QCT Platform-on-Demand Designed for Converged Workloads,”as we’ll see, by relying on open source software and the latest high performance/low cost system architectures,
…
From Schneier on Security
A Cybersecurity Policy Agenda
The Aspen Institute’s Aspen Cybersecurity Group — I’m a member — has released its cybersecurity policy agenda for the next four years.
The next administration and Congress cannot simultaneously address the wide array of cybersecurity…From The Eponymous Pickle
On IBM Factsheets
On IBM Factsheets, their overview: https://aifs360.mybluemix.net/introduction Looking more closely.
Why IBM’s AI Fact Sheets should be the industry standard in thenextweb
Every once in awhile an idea comes along that’s soAI…From Schneier on Security
Finnish Data Theft and Extortion
The Finnish psychotherapy clinic Vastaamo was the victim of a data breach and theft. The criminals tried extorting money from the clinic. When that failed, they started extorting money from the patients:
Neither the company nor…From insideHPC
Cambridge Quantum Reports Progress toward ‘Meaning Aware’ NLP
UK-based Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC), a quantum software and algorithm specialist, today released researcher papers on its use of quantum computing to develop intuitive, “meaning-aware” natural language processing (QNLP)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Delivers New AI Capabilities
New developments from IBM, and based on this it seems they are attempting to make AI easier to use and deliver. Notably things like delivering FAQ is the simplest thing you might want to provide information quickly in a conversation…
From insideHPC
UK Quantum Company Phasecraft Announces Seed Funding Round
London – 10 December 2020 – Quantum software company Phasecraft today closed what it said is a record seed round for a quantum computing company in the UK. Its new £3.7m in funding is led by VC firm LocalGlobe, along with Episode1…