Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2020
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Catalyzing Computing Podcast Episode 23 – Game-Based Learning and Photovoltaics with Erik Verlage (Part 1)
A new episode of the Computing Community Consortium‘s (CCC) podcast, Catalyzing Computing, is now available. Khari Douglas interviews Erik Verlage, a research scientist at MIT who creates digital learning tools for photonics…
From Computational Complexity
Presentations of Diffie-Helman leave out how to find g
When I first taught Diffie Helman I read the following
1) Alice and Bob agree on p a prime and g a generator
2) Alice picks a, sends g^a to Bob, Bob picks b, sends g^b to Alice
3) Alice computes (g^b)^a and Bob computes (g^a)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Beating Zoom Fatigue
Somewhat of an old idea, how well can it be done? And, as we have been seeing with facial recognition, will it be blocked for implying the wrong 'kind' of control? I would further ask, is 'zoom fatigue' any different from…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Baking Anti-Malware into CPUs
Continued back and forth, the article is skeptical about how well this will work. But something must be done,
Intel will soon bake anti-malware defenses directly into its CPUs
Control-Flow Enforcement Technology will debut in
By…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scan Uses Wrinkles, Spots
Was surprised that this was not more often commonly done, but perhaps it was as part of an overall facial scan?
AI algorithm identifies age of faces in photos using wrinkles, spots by Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum in Techxplore
An…
From The Eponymous Pickle
OpenAI Text Generation
The OpenAPI text generation system was previously described as 'too dangerous', has now been released in a new and I assume less dangerous form. Seems to claim generalized text completion tasks, and they claim is very easy
Described…
From insideHPC
insideHPC Special Report: Citizens Benefit from Public/Private Partnerships
This special report sponsored by Dell Technologies, takes a look at how now more than ever, agencies from all levels of government are teaming with private Information Technology (IT) organizations to leverage AI and HPC to
…
From Schneier on Security
Examining the US Cyber Budget
Jason Healey takes a detailed look at the US federal cybersecurity budget and reaches an important conclusion: the US keeps saying that we need to prioritize defense, but in fact we prioritize attack. To its credit, this budget…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technique Enables Cheaper Fertilizer Production
Local and simpler form of fertilizer. Manure?
Technique could enable Cheaper Fertilizer production
Chemical engineers take a step toward generating ammonia with small-scale, electrochemical reactors. By Anne Trafton | MIT
Most…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Fakes and Frauds via AI
Creating frauds that are hard to distinguish from the real thing.
AI vs. AI By R. Colin Johnson in ACM
The Hackathon for Peace, Justice and Security (logo pictured) featured a contest to create the best AI software to identify…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Proof Checking: Not Line by Line
Proofs and perpetual motion machines Leonardo da Vinci is, of course, famous for his paintings and drawings, but was also interested in inventions, and in various parts of science including mathematics and engineering. It is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Control of Genetic Behavior
Interesting linking to specific group behavior. What behavior would you want to influence? Then, thinking about if further, looks rather dangerous.
Genetic Control of Collective Behavior
The Harvard Gazette By Jessica Lau…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Considering the Length of Lists
Very nicely put pieee on the length of lists. Very true., good to have in the back of your mind when writing or speaking.
Communicate Using the Numbers 1, 2, 3, and More By Thomas A. Limoncelli
Communications of the ACM, June…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Aiming to put AI in Your Pocket
Mentioned this previously, now more in Singularity Hub on the topic:
MIT’s Tiny New Brain Chip Aims for AI in Your Pocket
By Jason Dorrier - Jun 11, 2020 in Singularity Hub
The human brain operates on roughly 20 watts of power (a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet Archive Threatened with Suit
We used the INternet Archive early on to track the use of web sites and trademarks. But had not visited for a while. Now saw this controversy which had been broiling. A publishers threat to sue the archive in an emergency…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NorthWestern: Emerging Trends in Retail Robotics
Good in detail piece worth looking at:
Emerging Trends in Retail Robotics, 24 pages, May 2020 Northwestern, Retail Analytics Council
Introduction:
Robots are increasingly being deployed in retail environments. The reasons for
In…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Human Cells with Squid-Like Transparency
I think we need more human organs with squid-like features. 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 insideHPC
Frontera at TACC Reveals COVID-19 Molecular ‘Sugar Coating’ that Camouflages Virus
Researchers using the Frontera supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) have uncovered the atomic makeup of the sugary shield on the coronavirus that could prove instrumental to the workings of the contagion…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will Amazon Change its Retail Model?
Interesting examination. in HBSWK. Likely but only to the extent it can continue to provide value. Here too an examination of the state of its work.
Will Challenged Amazon Tweak Its Retail Model Post-Pandemic? by James Heskett…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NSF Seeks to Improve Smart Some Security
Useful direction.
Scientists want to fix our notoriously insecure smart home devices
The National Science Foundation wants to boost consumer trust in the Internet of Things.
By Steve Dent, @stevetdent in Engadget
The dream of a smart…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cisco's Ava Telepresence Robot
Saw something similar demonstrated at the Cisco smart home innovation center in the late 90s. Somewhat surprising that this coming for them now, would like to see more. Perhaps the time is now right. Note 'telepresence', e.g…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nokia Research on 5G
Indications of the importance of emerging 5G:
In Global newswire:
SomeindNew Nokia research reveals biggest 5G drivers for enterprise IT and OT
Press Release New Nokia research reveals biggest 5G drivers for enterprise IT and OT…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seeing Through Walls
Had seen this before, fascinating example of how more and richer signals can be leveraged into new kinds of imaging. Here a kind of fabulous example, seeing through walls. But in the right circumstances, with the right data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Metabolic Human Models
Considerable complexity in such models, but they at least will point to the kinds and amounts of data and predictions that will be necessary to provide computational results. A kind of Digital Twin.
Virtual Metabolic Humans—Harvey…
From Schneier on Security
Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit
This is a weird story: Hernandez was able to evade capture for so long because he used Tails, a version of Linux designed for users at high risk of surveillance and which routes all inbound and outbound connections through the…
From insideHPC
AWS: GA of Arm-based Instances Boost Price/Performance 40% for HPC, Inferencing Workloads
Claiming 40 percent better price/performance over current x86-based instances, Amazon Web Services today announced the general availability of its sixth generation of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances with three…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Standing Committees Chairs’ Report – June 2020
Arati Dixit and Bushra Anjum, as ACM-W Standing Committees chairs, have been overseeing four committees for about a year now. These four vibrant pillars are the Rising Star Committee, the Scholarships Committee, the NextGen Committee…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF DCL: Guidance for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Proposers to the Faculty Early-Career Development (CAREER) and CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) Programs
The following is a letter to the community from Margaret Martonosi (Assistant Director) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). Dear Colleagues: With this…
From insideHPC
CMU’s Jerry Wang Wins 2020 Frederick Howes Award
Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor Gerald “Jerry” Wang has been named the 2020 Frederick A. Howes Scholar in Computational Science for his work in nanoscale fluid flows. Wang, a fellow from 2014-2018, earned his mechanical…
From Yoshua Bengio
Science and innovation in times of a pandemic
Mila’s COVI project has found itself at the centre of a public debate regarding the use of an app in the fight against COVID-19. While…
L’article Science and innovation in times of a pandemic est apparu en premier sur Yoshua.…