Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2020
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots Dancing, Today
From Boston Dynamics, now part of Hyundai. At the link they outline each of the dancers background. Less scary than some views. Or is it?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Whats Next in Tech
An outline from HPE
Exploring What’s next in tech – Insights, information, and ideas for today’s IT and business leaders
Accelerating the future. The race to stay ahead in an increasingly digital world
Organizations are digitally…From Putting People First
The Financial Times’ Gillian Tett on remote user research
From City of London traders to Indian rickshaw drivers, everyone uses a more intimate style of conversation on video calls.
From Computational Complexity
Complexity Year in Review 2020
A follow up to last year's runner up NEEXP in MIP*, the new paper…MIP*=RE by Zhengfeng Ji, Anand Natarajan, Thomas Vidick, John Wright and Henry Yuen
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC: High Performance Christmas Episode
After a late fall hiatus, Radio Free HPC is back, baby. This is our holiday episode and we start by pledging to be 29 percent more scintillating in the new year, which is a significant bonus for listeners if we can hit that mark…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Looking Back on Computer Science Education in 2020
What a year it has been. I was reading my start of the year post from January. The closing was “2019 has some serious potential.” I had no idea what was to come in 2020. By the middle of March I was teaching online to students…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Buys Wondery for?
Though most recently have been looking through podcast offerings, had not heard of Wondery. Note too that Amazon now also has the talking book system Audible, which I have also used. All these deal with the interactionAmazon…
From Schneier on Security
Brexit Deal Mandates Old Insecure Crypto Algorithms
In what is surely an unthinking cut-and-paste issue, page 921 of the Brexit deal mandates the use of SHA-1 and 1024-bit RSA:
The open standard s/MIME as extension to de facto e-mail standard SMTP will be deployed to encrypt …From The Eponymous Pickle
Review Manipulation in Amazon
Had only just recently directly noticed fake or manipulated reviews on Amazon. Had thought that Amazon was controlling these, but then alterted to it by an ArsTechnica article, see below. Remember being impressed by 'extensive…
From Putting People First
Social science perspectives on artificial intelligence. A special issue.
This special issue collects six articles tackling artificial intelligence (AI) from a social science perspective.
From The Eponymous Pickle
City Researchers Reveal Link
Seems there would be a link, but what kind of behavior is indicated? Always looking for predictive behavior we can leverage.
City Researchers Reveal Link Between Coding of Cryptocurrencies and Their Market Behavior
City University…From insideHPC
‘Let’s Talk Exascale’: How Supercomputing Is Shaking Up Earthquake Science
Supercomputing is bringing seismic change to earthquake science. A field that historically has predicted by looking back now is moving forward with HPC and physics-based models to comprehensively simulate the earthquake process…
From Schneier on Security
On the Evolution of Ransomware
Good article on the evolution of ransomware:
Though some researchers say that the scale and severity of ransomware attacks crossed a bright line in 2020, others describe this year as simply the next step in a gradual and, unfortunately…From The Eponymous Pickle
Schneier on SolarWinds
A considerable piece, with much supporting general and technical information and links, on the SolarWinds attack. Also includes many comments I am working my way through.
Russia’s SolarWinds Attack by Bruce Schneier
Recent news…From The Eponymous Pickle
737: Management and Technology
My daughter in law flies for American Airlines, has been in furlough for awhile now. The most recent issue of the ACM outlines elements of how 737 technology has been managed. All technology is by definition managed, andBoeing's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neural Networks are Bayesian
Just reading this, worth thinking about. Technical.
Neural networks are fundamentally Bayesian in TowardsDataScience By Chris Mingard
Stochastic Gradient Descent approximates Bayesian sampling
Deep neural networks (DNNs) haveIn…From The Eponymous Pickle
Voice AI Trends in Europe
Podcast and more of work being done in and for Europe. From Voicebot
Voice AI in Europe Year-in-Review 2020 with 169 Labs, Soapbox Labs, and Voxalyze – Voicebot
Podcast Ep 185 Bret Kinsella in Voicebot
oday we talk about voice…From insideHPC
Holiday Week Update: HPC Community Funds Rich Brueckner Scholarship Awards to Goal – and Beyond
Last week, we issued an update on a fund drive in memory of one of the HPC community’s most beloved figures, the late Rich Brueckner. We’re happy to report that many generous souls – many of them friends of Rich’s, no doubt –…
From Putting People First
[Book] Creating a Culture of Innovation
Innovation can only occur in the right environment. While organizations can attempt to hire for innovation, there is little that can blossom in a restrictive and discouraging physical setting - even if the space holds the most…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Detecting Sarcasm
Even in the early days of reading consumer reactions to product communications we knew it was useful to have an idea of how much sarcasm was being used. To determine human reactions to statements or images. Often we justThis…
From insideHPC
Modern HPC and Big Data Design Strategies for Data Centers
This insideHPC Special Research Report, "Modern HPC and Big Data Design Strategies for Data Centers," provides an overview of what to consider when selecting an infrastructure capable of meeting the new workload processing needs…
From BLOG@CACM
Teaching Critical Computing is a Grand Challenge for the Whole CS Curriculum
We need to prepare our students' to have a critical perspective on computing, and that requires changing the curriculum, not just a course.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Making Smart Thermostats More Efficient
Beyond the simplest adaptable method.
Making Smart Thermostats More Efficient
MIT News
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Russia's Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) collaborated…From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Geopolitics of AI
Useful thoughts on power and balance, beyond AI, but also all kinds of analytical method.
The geopolitics of artificial intelligence
24 Dec 2020| By Anastasia Kapetas
As artificial intelligence technologies become more powerfulThese…From The Eponymous Pickle
Doing Simple Chatbots
Close to the kind of thing we did simply in the 90s. In the Alexa Blog:
How to Create a Chatbot With No Coding Experience in 4 Simple Steps By Lydia Roth
If you really want to drive customer engagement, learning how to create…From The Eponymous Pickle
Broader Strategies for Cyberattack
Being more precise about detection data gathering and retaliation. Wondering what the context of the existing modeling included.
A Better Kind of Cybersecurity Strategy
MIT News By Peter Dizikes
Researchers at the Massachusetts…From The Eponymous Pickle
DeepMind Masters Games without the Rules, Just Rewards
MuZero. An intriguing example, with the right data.
DeepMind's AI Masters Games Without Even Being Taught the Rules
IEEE Spectrum by Philip E. Ross
The MuZero artificial intelligence (AI) developed by Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind…From The Eponymous Pickle
Pandemic Holiday Retail Post Mortem
What Just Happened? Good overview by a number of experts on retail process. Join us in January for a recap of the craziest holiday season on record. Wed., Jan. 27 – 12 noon ET/9 am PT
(Can't make it? Register and we'll alert…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
My Science and Technology review for 2020
The original PlayStation game console (1994) was revolution thanks in part to its CD drive that could read data at an astonishing 0.3 MB/s. In 2020, the PlayStation 5 came out with 5 GB/s of disk bandwidth, so over 15,000 more…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Modifying the Way Companies Talk
Because machines are analyzing the patterns in what is said. And of course, machines will soon also generate some of the conversation.
How machines are changing the way companies talk By Khari Johnson @kharijohnson in VentureBeat…