Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2020
From The Eponymous Pickle
Landing, Exploring Venus with Steam Punk Sensors
Quite a curious idea, more and images at the link. Applicable in other contexts?
Steampunk Venus Rover Ideas Win NASA Contest to 'Explore Hell' With Clockwork Robots
Space.com
Elizabeth Howell
July 27, 2020
NASA's Jet Propulsion…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sign Language Translating Glove
Consider the broad increase in functionality from these kinds of AI applications.
A high-tech glove can translate sign language with 99-percent accuracy
It could help more people learn to sign.
Steve Dent, @stevetdent
Jun Chen Lab…
From Schneier on Security
BlackBerry Phone Cracked
Australia is reporting that a BlackBerry device has been cracked after five years: An encrypted BlackBerry device that was cracked five years after it was first seized by police is poised to be the key piece of evidence in one…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon's Project Kuiper to Provide Internet from Space
Have followed this for some time. Internet from space, globally. Apparently the technology works well. Some of us are still worried about floating that many satellites and blocking views of the sky. Along with other related…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Cleverer Automata Exist
A breakthrough on the separating words problem Zachary Chase is a graduate student of Ben Green at Oxford. Chase has already solved a number of interesting problems–check his site for more details. His advisor is famous for his…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Wants TikTok
The hot global video and music sharing capability it would seem primarily competes with YouTube and Facebook. Meanwhile Microsoft has largely gotten out of consumer music sharing. To get the data generated? Perhaps for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mouse Co-Creator Dies
In our meeting with the co-creator of the mouse in the 80s, Doug Engelbart, was quick to mention William English as the person to create the first mouse device. I have placed many posts about our interaction with Doug Engelbart…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drug Delivery
Once again, its the accurate and efficient delivery problem. Often a key component of process.
COMMANDing Drug Delivery
MIT News
Sabbi Lall
July 10, 2020
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are using a computational…
From Computational Complexity
The Gauss story is false yet we still tell it. Should we?
When teaching discrete math a while back I told the following story which some had already heard in High School:
When Gauss was in 1st grade the class was being bad. So the teacher made them sit down and add up the numbers…
From BLOG@CACM
3 Proposals to Change How We Teach Computing In Order to Reduce Inequality
Computer Science education is inequitable. The least-prepared students are going to be hurt the most in online teaching. We have to make change now.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Learning Python: Part 1
Python has been on my radar for years but I haven’t really had the motivation to learn it myself. It’s time though for several reasons. Reason number one is that I need a learning goal to keep stretching my mind and knowledge…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Tutorial and Presentation on AI and Machine Learning
Link via DSC to a considerable presentation on Machine Learning from Google. Below a quick intro with a clue to some common uses of what we are now calling AI.
Google Tutorial on Machine Learning
Posted by Capri Granville in DSC…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Introductory Guide to the Use of the Data Warehouse
Hardy comprehensive, as the title suggests, but a good introductory piece on the data warehouse. A minimum you should know when dealing with corporate data. Non-technical.
Comprehensive Guide to the Data Warehouse
Data science…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet of Medical Things
From the ACM, Vint Cerf talks about the current and near future state of medicine.
On the Internet of Medical Things
By Vinton G. Cerf
Communications of the ACM, August 2020, Vol. 63 No. 8, Page 5 10.1145/3406779
Google Vice President…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Smart Supermarket Shelf
A space we did lots of work on with startups and big players. Our innovation center tested them all.
Smart Supermarket Shelves: A Shopping Transformation
Yuval Boger / 13 Jul 2020 / Connected Devices / IoT in Readwrite
digital…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Baidu and Self Driving
Update on Baudu's involvement in self driving.
Baidu completes its computer for self-driving cars
It'll first be used for autonomous valet parking.
Jon Fingas, @jonfingas in Engadget
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (August 1st 2020)
In Japan, a large dam is being constructed almost entirely by robots. Naked mole rats are mammals that do not age in the sense that their fitness and mortality follows a flat curve, and not a Gompertz curve. Senescent cells are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AR Simulation for First Responders
An example of where AR can work best, where the specific examples are not rare, yet are relatively easy to construct in a form of simulation.
AR Tool Shown to Help Surgeons Remotely Guide First Responders in Battlefield-Like Scenarios…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Emergence of Trust Tokens
Google buys in, likely create more acceptance.
Google’s ‘trust tokens’ are here to take cookies down a peg
The company plans to eventually phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser
By Kim Lyons in TheVerge
Google said earlier…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fully Autonomous AI Running a Wall Street Hedge Fund
With a number of implications/ Interesting claim here. The emergence of legitimate DAOs Distributed Autonomous Organizations?
No humans required, the fully autonomous AI running a Wall Street hedge fund
by 7wData
I’ve been documenting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Customization
Thoughtful and considerable piece on product personalization. Psychology at some level, but also linking direct specific need to function as well as a statement of value. Customer as co-creators is an interesting way of
The…