Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2021
From Schneier on Security
NSO Group Hacked
NSO Group, the Israeli cyberweapons arms manufacturer behind the Pegasus spyware — used by authoritarian regimes around the world to spy on dissidents, journalists, human rights workers, and others — was hacked. Or, at least,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Paying Older Audience Attention
Brought to my attention, being in the older, more experienced audience myself, struck me as rarely paid attention to. Good first look at this kind of resource problem.
Your Messaging to Older Audiences Is Outdated by Hal Hershfield…From BLOG@CACM
A Standard Plan for Modern Requirements
The ambitious systems that we develop today need a proper requirements structure. The plan defined here organizes requirements specification along four books, the four PEGS of requirements: Project, Environment, Goals and System…
From The Eponymous Pickle
RiskIQ Joins Microsoft: Good
Risk is ultimately 'the thing'. Both in terms of analyzing how what you do is risky in various contexts. And also in terms of external threats that increase your risk. Both the risk of what you plan to do, and the risk…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Logical Reasoning for ReClor Challenge
We used strictly logical reasoning in our early look at this space. This approach is well worth a look, links to paper and publication below. Technical.
Microsoft Research Blog
Microsoft LReasoner leads the ReClor challenge on…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Changes How Ads Track People Around the Internet
Had been reported on some time ago, devil will be in the details as they emerge in context,
Google Totally Changing How Ads Track People Around the Internet By The Washington Post, June 18, 2021
It's a common sight: Ads fromMuch…From The Eponymous Pickle
Miniature Spectrometer for a Smartphone
A description and a number of potential application from Fraunhofer, including but not limited to detecting counterfeit drugs and other products. We performed such tests for product authenticity checks. Especially usefulChip…
From insideHPC
Honeywell and Cambridge Quantum Claim 3 Milestones
BROOMFIELD, Colo., July 20, 2021 — Honeywell (Nasdaq: HON) and Cambridge Quantum today announced three scientific and technical milestones that they say demonstrate the viability of large-scale quantum computing and that quantum…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Pluses and Minuses of the Unary increment Operator
There has been a conversation on Twitter about the unary increment operator (++) and related (+=, –, etc.). I tend to gloss over these when teaching beginners. Especially those in a first programming course. A friend of mineWould…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hubble Fixed!
Consider the amount of knowledge and data involved! Great if this comes through. Also to the fact that such hardware and software can be remotely changed. Also a hint to how remote maintenance can be planned for and done…
From insideHPC
Duality Quantum Accelerator Accepts 6 into Inaugural Cohort
Duality, the nation’s first accelerator exclusively for quantum companies, has accepted six startups for Cohort 1. Duality is led by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago and the Chicago…
From insideHPC
DOE Awards $3.7M for National Lab HPC Research for Energy Spplications
July 19, 2021 — The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently awarded $3.7 million for high performance computing (HPC) projects that address key challenges in US manufacturing and materials development. As part of DOE’s High Performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Happened to Watson? Still here.
We were invited early on to work with Watson's prototype. But then it did clearly slow behind its stated expectations. Yet a number of things also came out of it, like means to construct pieces that could be assistants in…
From insideHPC
ALCF Developer Session: Inside the NVIDIA Ampere A100 GPU in ThetaGPU and Perlmutter
On Wednesday, July 28 at 11 am CT, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility will present a developer session focused on utilization of the Nvidia Ampere A100 GPU in ALCF’s ThetaGPU and NERSC’s Perlmutter supercomputers. Registration…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Serialized Story Platform
Interesting. Am a user of a number of ways to consume text, including Amazon, Kindle and Audible. Now we can consume these in new ways? Mined from existing text and now generated for specific wants. By authors they imply…
From Schneier on Security
Candiru: Another Cyberweapons Arms Manufacturer
Citizen Lab has identified yet another Israeli company that sells spyware to governments around the world: Candiru.
From the report:
Summary:
Candiru is a secretive Israel-based company that sells spyware exclusively to governments…From The Eponymous Pickle
Train Adapt, Optimize: TAO
More of interest on the NVIDIA TAO effort:
Fast Track AI Model Adaptation with TAO
Building a state-of-the-art deep learning model is a complex and time-consuming process. To achieve this, large datasets collected for the model…From insideHPC
Spend Less on HPC/AI Storage (and more on CPU/GPU compute)
[SPONSORED POST] In this whitepaper courtesy of HPE, you'll learn about the three approaches that can help you to feed your CPU- and GPU-accelerated compute nodes without I/O bottlenecks while creating efficiencies in Gartner…
From Computational Complexity
Political Intersections: Trump honors Antifa member who was shot dead by police
1) Trump and other reps have said the following about the Jan 6 event at various times:
a) The Jan 6 event was freedom fighters who were fighting the noble fight to overturn a fraudulent election. Rah Rah!
b) The Jan 6 event was…From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots Adapt to Challenging Terrain in Real Time
Terrain-able robotics have been very impressive in recent years. Here yet more advances by some relatively unexpected parties. Ultimately will it become rare to have humans repetitively port around themselves and things they…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On-Demand Session: Deploying Edge AI in Manufacturing
Useful piece with examples:
Deploying Edge AI for manufacturing Supply Chains In NVIDIA Developer
On-Demand Session: Deploying Edge AI in Manufacturing By Amanda Saunders
When it comes to production, companies spend endless cycles…From The Eponymous Pickle
Cybercrime Intervention
A considerable, interesting piece on some of the work being done on getting inside cybercrime gangs.
How Does One Get Hired by a Top Cybercrime Gang? in KrebsOnsecurity (Intro)
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) last week…From The Eponymous Pickle
Image Improvement Synthesis Models
From the Google AI blog. Interesting ways to improve images based on AI models. Illustrative images at the link.
High Fidelity Image Generation Using Diffusion Models
Friday, July 16, 2021, Posted by Jonathan Ho, Research Scientist…From The Eponymous Pickle
Is the U.S. Labor Shortage the Big Break AI Needs?
Labor needs and process are being re thought.too.
Is the U.S. Labor Shortage the Big Break AI Needs?
AI May Be the Big Break Labor Needs
Hesitancy and misconceptions about AI in the workplace have long been a barrier to widespread…From The Eponymous Pickle
Warm AI is Better
Would agree, but being right is better yet. .... in many cases we got AI to be engaging with our brands ... but like in any assistance style interaction, we want the RIGHT, in context answer first, else we have wasted ourTechnion…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Embedding things in the Blockchain
Note this article. also notable are the related comments. Information can be embedded in a blockchain that is not related to its primary use. A security issue. Schneier writes, and further comments:
" ... To be fair, not…From The Eponymous Pickle
China Requires Face scans for Game Night Use
More direct control of children and minor's use of games at specific hours. Different from what Apple is planning in upcoming OS, where a person can define their own 'focus' times. Here the government will do it for you. Chinese…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autonomous Drone Swarms
A favorite topic, where we proposed swarms of drones to work together tracking warehouse conditions.
Autonomous Drone Swarm Can Localize Gas Leaks By TU Delft (Netherlands)
Scientists at the Netherlands' Delft University ofTU…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Observations on #CSTA2021 Virtual Conference
The CSTA 2021 Virtual Conference is in the books. I really did enjoy it and I learned a lot. Virtual conferences are different from in-person conferences and I plan a post on that. But for now I want to talk about this year.
…From insideHPC
Green Revolution Cooling Names Participants for Liquid Cooling Awareness Month
AUSTIN – July 16, 2021 – GRC (Green Revolution Cooling), the leader in single-phase data center liquid immersion cooling, announced it will partner with Dell, Intel, Prasa, Vertiv, and Mission Critical magazine for the first …