Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2021
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Advancing and Counting
Announcing tomorrow’s Women in Data Science workshop (global start tonight 8pm ET), plus a US State Department event for International Women’s Day (also March 8) Santa Fe Inst. external faculty src Dana Randall is an ADVANCE…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sidewalk Robots Get Rights
Coming changes in urban and suburban views.
Sidewalk robots get legal rights as "pedestrians" By Jennifer A. Kingson in Axios
As small robots proliferate on sidewalks and city streets, so does legislation that grants them generous…From The Eponymous Pickle
Non-Fungible, Blockchained, Unique and Expensive
Don't fully understand this, but if someone is willing to pay for something provably unique? The picture is shown at the link.
How a 10-Second Video Clip Sold for $6.6 Million By Reuters, March 5, 2021 Reuters
An art collector…From The Eponymous Pickle
Quantum Effect in Erasing
Pondering the implications of this.
The Demon Is in the Detail—Trinity Team Discovers Uniquely Quantum Effect in Erasing Information
Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) October 16, 2020
Researchers at Ireland's Trinity College Dublin…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (March 6th 2021)
Increasing schooling does not improve social outcomes at a population level. Venitian glass was made near Venice as early as 450 BC. It spread worldwide through trade. Venetian glass made its way as far as North America. We have…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Material AI Invention and Discovery
New directions in new material discovery. As it mentions, AI-driven molecular driven platform that is said to invent new molecular structure
IBM launches AI platform to discover new materials
Kyle Wiggers @Kyle_L_Wiggers in…From The Eponymous Pickle
Stop Conversations Sooner?
Perhaps a guide for chatbots? Or is the guide for them different? Though like all such guides, and rules of thumb, depends highly on context.
When Should You End a Conversation? Sooner Than You Think, Harvard Research ShowsBy…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google to Stop Tracking Users for Targeted Ads
Has long been done with cookies. More recently has been more dangerously proposed via 'CName Collusion' See: https://twit.tv/shows/security-now/episodes/808?autostart=false https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-808-Notes.pdf ...
…From Schneier on Security
On Not Fixing Old Vulnerabilities
How is this even possible?
…26% of companies Positive Technologies tested were vulnerable to WannaCry, which was a threat years ago, and some even vulnerable to Heartbleed. “The most frequent vulnerabilities detected during …From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Cartoon
Squid ink.
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 guidelines here.
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Digitally Signed PDF Files
Interesting paper: “Shadow Attacks: Hiding and Replacing Content in Signed PDFs“:
Abstract: Digitally signed PDFs are used in contracts and invoices to guarantee the authenticity and integrity of their content. A user opening…From The Eponymous Pickle
Imaginary Numbers Essential for a Quantum Reality
Good piece, math-technical, worth a skim regardless. Intro below.
Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Quantum Reality
A new thought experiment indicates that quantum mechanics doesn’t work without strange numbers…From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook's Seer Recognizes Images
Thinking the implications of this in business practice.
Facebook’s new AI model SEER can teach itself to recognize images By Mike Wheatley in SiliconAngle
Researchers at Facebook Inc. have created an artificial intelligence-based…From Schneier on Security
No, RSA Is Not Broken
I have been seeing this paper by cryptographer Peter Schnorr making the rounds: “Fast Factoring Integers by SVP Algorithms.” It describes a new factoring method, and its abstract ends with the provocative sentence: “This destroys…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Changing Human Choice and Chance?
Perhaps it will, but its still in very small ways. We are not even close to major changes. ....
AI is killing choice and chance—changing what it means to be human by Nir Eisikovits and Dan Feldman in Techexplore
The history…From The Eponymous Pickle
Syncing time on Smartphones for Measurements
Can be useful for synchronization of measurement.
Twist-n-Sync: Skoltech Scientists Use Smartphone Gyroscopes to Sync Time Across Devices
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia)
February 19, 2021
A software-based algorithm…From Putting People First
What’s mine is ours: how consumption is changing
When customers form an emotional attachment or self-identify with a product, that sense of “mine” enhances its luster and keeps them coming back for more. As shoppers shift away from owning material things, how can marketers…
From Putting People First
[Book] A City Is Not a Computer
A bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
WSJ Meets Group Algorithms
Our whole life is solving puzzles. — Ernő Rubik Cropped from source Jessica Fridrich is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton University. She is an expert on data hiding, that is, steganography…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
WSJ Meets Group Algorithms
Our whole life is solving puzzles. — Ernő Rubik Cropped from source Jessica Fridrich is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton University. She is an expert on data hiding, that is, steganography…
From insideHPC
IBM Says Quantum Error Correcting Software Coming in 2023 – ‘Quantum Comes of Age’
If quantum isn’t to be a technology “that’s always 10 years away,” then quantum error correction (QEC) – one of the high hurdles to quantum becoming a practical reality – must be tamed. This week at a Wall Street Journal virtual…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AWS Enhances Amazon Managed Blockchain with Ethereum support
This is interesting because it incudes ethereum support for Smart Contracts, being examined here.
AWS Enhances Amazon Managed Blockchain with Ethereum support By Maria Deutscher in SiliconAngle
Amazon Web Services Inc. has launched…From BLOG@CACM
Is the Pandemic Affecting Science and Engineering Undergraduate Students?
The importance of the students’ voice.
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Finds Battery Materials
More detail about the method at the link.
Using AI to Find Essential Battery Materials
As battery demand soars, researchers are turning to artificial intelligence for more effective and sustainable methods By Maria GallucciDemand…From Schneier on Security
Four Microsoft Exchange Zero-Days Exploited by China
Microsoft has issued an emergency Microsoft Exchange patch to fix four zero-day vulnerabilities currently being exploited by China.
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Video Analysis in Athletics
An example of how AI pattern recognition can achieve fine grain pattern detection and matching. Here in athletic training planning and evaluation. Note links to an athletic tracking system that might be used to provide data…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How does your programming language handle “minus zero” (-0.0)?
The ubiquitous IEEE floating-point standard defines two numbers to represent zero, the positive and the negative zeros. You also have the positive and negative infinity. If you compute the inverse of the positive zero, you get…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Soft Robot Swims in the Mariana Trench
An example of extreme exploration, using a soft biomimicking design. Considerable possibilities here.
Soft robot swims in the Mariana Trench in Techexplore by Bob Yirka
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions…From The Eponymous Pickle
China Charges Ahead with National Digital Currency
Implications of these changes for US and Others?
China Charges Ahead with National Digital Currency By The New York Times, March 4, 2021
China has charged ahead with a bold effort to remake the way that government-backed money…From The Eponymous Pickle
Quantum Wavelength Switch
Interesting direction outlines. Note the number of users in the quantum network being key.
Quantum Internet Closer to Reality, Thanks to This Switch
By Purdue University News, March 3, 2021
A new study has found that using aEngineers…