Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2020
From The Eponymous Pickle
Templates for Computerized Robot Design
Seems a useful approach as we use robot solutions for more applications. Includes both physical designs and control programming. And Optimization to tasks involved.
Computer-Aided Creativity in Robot Design
MIT News, By Daniel…From The Eponymous Pickle
Four Stages of Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
A good intro look at RPA from DSC. Below the intro, more at the link. A good place to start with AI oriented automation. Also not emphasized enough. I would include the 'process' part, and ask: how does the process modeled…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Plans to Deliver Quantum Safe Crypto in Cloud
Much more at the link. Available at all scales, speeds, needs?
IBM brings hybrid cloud leadership…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Java Buffer types versus native arrays: which is faster?
When programming in C, one has to allocate and de-allocate memory by hand. It is an error prone process. In contrast, newer languages like Java often manage their memory automatically. Java relies on garbage collection. In effect…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Watch Plenary Presentations from the CCC’s Visioning Workshop on Reversible Classical Computing
In early October the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) held a virtual workshop on Physics & Engineering Issues in Adiabatic/Reversible Classical Computing. This workshop was organized by Michael (Mike) P. Frank (Sandia National…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Need the Right Data, Methods and the Willingness to use them
Challenges and Dilemmas in context
China's Surveillance State Sucks Up Data. U.S. Tech Is Key to Sorting It
The New York Times By Paul Mozur; Don Clark
Chips from U.S. companies Intel and Nvidia power a Chinese supercomputing…From Schneier on Security
Manipulating Systems Using Remote Lasers
Many systems are vulnerable:
Researchers at the time said that they were able to launch inaudible commands by shining lasers — from as far as 360 feet — at the microphones on various popular voice assistants, including Amazon…From The Eponymous Pickle
Safer Navigation in Unknown Territory
Key aspect of safer navigation .... dealing with uncertainty in unknown territory.
ML Guarantees Robots' Performance in Unknown Territory
Princeton Engineering News By Molly Sharlach
Princeton University researchers have developed…From Schneier on Security
Check Washing
I can’t believe that check washing is still a thing:
“Check washing” is a practice where thieves break into mailboxes (or otherwise steal mail), find envelopes with checks, then use special solvents to remove the information …From insideHPC
insideHPC Guide to QCT Platform-on-Demand Designed for Converged Workloads – Part 2
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 BLOG@CACM
Dijkstra Was Wrong About 'Radical Novelty': Metaphors in CS Education
The most cited CS education paper is, unfortunately, wrong.
From Computational Complexity
James Randi, Magicians-Author-Skeptic, passed away at the age of 92
James The Amazing Randi died on October 20, 2020, at the age of 92. He is survived by
his husband Jose Alvarez. His Wikipedia page is here
From My Biased Coin
ADAPT: Designing Activity-Informed Viral Diagnostic Assays
I wanted to give a pointer to a new preprint up on bioRxiv on developing diagnostic assays for viruses, by (first author) Hayden Metsky (and others!) out of the Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute (that I've been a bit involved…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Does It Matter How Fast the Code Is?
I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with code lately. One of the things I have been experimenting with is cryptography (See Tiny Book of Simple Cryptography) For one project I wanted to create a string of ones and zeros toWhich…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of the Kitchen
Our own innovation centers had 'kitchens of the future' to demonstrate product use and appliance integration. Consumer behavior in context. We invited companies to provide future scenarios. This was in the first flurry…
From The Noisy Channel
Putting Users Back In Control
Francis Fukuyama, Barak Richman, and Ashish Goel recently published a piece in Foreign Affairs, which they ambitiously titled “How to Save Democracy From Technology: Ending Big Tech’s Information Monopoly”.
The gist of their proposal…From The Eponymous Pickle
Tesla Could Widen Release of Self Driving Software
More data being gathered, and likely getting closer to sharing roads with many more fully self-driving vehicles.
Tesla could widen release of 'self-driving' software in two weeks By Reuters Staff
(Reuters) - Tesla Inc Chief…From The Eponymous Pickle
More Learning from Patrolling Spot Robotics
This kind of patrolled security, here on an oil rig, has been mentioned here before. Could be a mix of telepresence, and specific patrol routing. With camera recording of visual, auditory and contextual information. ThatBoston…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Don't Fear the Robots
Robotics and Automation will also create many jobs, just be ready for those jobs.
Don't Fear the Robots, and Other Lessons From a Study of the Digital Economy
The New York Times By Steve Lohr
A task force established by the Massachusetts…From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Industry Ecosystems
Useful look outlining the need for and nature of modern ecosystems, which ultimately create context for work and linking to analytics and AI, and results. Uncertainty also usefully considered.
IDC Launches the Future of Industry…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (November 28th 2020)
Homework favours kids with wealthier and better educated parents. My own kids have access to two parents with a college education, including a father who is publishing mathematically-intensive research papers. Do you think for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autonomous Cars Delivering Meds in London
More attempts at automated delivery:
Autonomous Green Robot Cars to Deliver Medicine Around London
Interesting Engineering By Chris Young
A fleet of autonomous, electrically-powered green robot vehicles has started delivering medicine…From The Eponymous Pickle
A New, Free, MIT Introduction to Machine Learning AI Course
We worked with MIT in a number of ways, with their supply chain group, their Media Laboratory and with a number of their researchers. Impressive group. I still provide publicity for some of their research. We introduced early…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Coffee Analysis Using Pattern Recognition
Used to be in the coffee blend analysis and optimization space, so this was interesting. Nicely done. We did some similar things with classical optimization and statistical systems. Below an intro, link takes you to more detail…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Zoom Abuse: TurkeyBombing
In the sense that your guard may be down to phishing when you are casually involved in video communication with family and friends.
TurkeyBombing Puts New Twist on Zoom Abuse In Threatpost
Threat actors already stole nearly 4…From The Eponymous Pickle
Rules as Code: White Paper
More on the direction of encoding legal rules and reasoning, like smart contracts, in coding. And their accurate use and manipulation.
'Rules as Code' will let computers apply laws and regulations by Guido Governatori, The…From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple Using Boston Robotics Spot
Been following various uses ot the 'Spot' robot. And how it makes its telepresence felt by its new subjects. Here new and different application, working with the construction of a building, apparently during the design…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Recorded Future Offers Handbook
From a company we connected with in their early days, have not read this yet, looks to be of general interest.
Get Your Handbook for Disrupting Adversaries and Reducing Risk
OCTOBER 15, 2020 • THE RECORDED FUTURE TEAM
If 2020 taught…From The Eponymous Pickle
Addiction and Notifications
Intriguing experimental results which might drive other kinds of behavior on the phone.
Phone addiction not driven by notifications, study finds By Cristina Criddle in BBC
Smartphone addiction is unlikely to be caused by notifications…From insideHPC
Why Developers are Turning to Ultra-powerful Workstations for More Creative Freedom at Less Cost
This white paper, "Why Developers are Turning to Ultra-powerful Workstations for More Creative Freedom at Less Cost," from Dell Technologies discusses why developers are turning to ultra-powerful workstations for more creative…