Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Procrastination can be your friend
Procrastination can be a serious problem leading to job loss, high anxiety and even significant psychological disability and dysfunction (according to wikipedia)...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Reading recommendation: Saturn
I just finished Saturn’s children. This is my third
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Top 25 Canadian Universities by Research Funding (2009)
University of Toronto (where I got my B.Sc. and M.Sc.) University of Alberta University of British Columbia Universit
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The Secret Behind Radical Innovation
Our global knowledge grows in slow, incremental steps. Darwin and Einstein mostly reinterpreted existing ideas. However, practical implementations sometimes take...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Become Independent of Peer Review
When I asked the director of a large—and successful—British software house his most serious problem, he said without hesitation “how to prevent clusters of incompetence...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Open Access is the Short-Sighted Fight
My colleague Stevan Harnad thinks it is silly to boycott for-profit journals. My ex-colleague Stephen Downes admits to being a boycotter, but he claims not to be...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How to Win Academic Debates
In an academic unit, all professors hold a little bit of power. Yet, unfortunately, professors have nuanced positions. Just like in a democracy, you cannot get...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Working With Industry Helps Researchers?
Is it a good idea for an academic researcher to work with industry R&D projects? Yes, in small doses: We find that university-industry relations exercise a positive...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Getting a Ph.D. for the Money?
Many of my Ph.D. students have admitted to being motivated by financial gain. Stanford is famous for their graduate-students-turned-entrepreneurs. Sergey Brin and...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
What is more fundamental: Physics or Computer Science?
Computer Science can be taken a natural science: the study of how the universe processes information. If it is a natural science, then does it build on Physics?...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Sensible hashing of variable-length strings is impossible
Consider the problem of hashing an infinite number of keys
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
A Simplified Open Publishing Manifesto
Bill Gasarch is proposing a manifesto on Open Scholarship. What a great idea! Imagine thousands of researchers openly agreeing on practices making research more...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The most important Theoretical Computer Science problem is inconsequential
Some consider the P = NP problem to be the most important Theoretical Computer Science problem. It asks whether all problems whose solution can be verified quickly...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
On academic branding
Good communication is part of our jobs as researchers. And communicating well, in 2009, means having an effective web presence. When I read someone’s paper, and...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The missing research tool
I want to know when a new research paper… is similar to one of my papers; cites one of my papers; is relevant to my current research. Why can’t I have this...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Students using podcasting and skipping class
According to a recent study, students do better if they skip class and listen to the podcasts. The article has been discussed in the New Scientist and the New York...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Are solo authors less cited?
Sylvie Noël submits to us the following fallacy—which appears in the editorial of a peer-reviewed journal. The editor-in-chief makes the following observation:...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How to fund research properly
Research is an industry. Unlike other industries, it is often almost entirely bound to government funding. Because research takes a long time to bear fruit, people...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
What I Have Learned About Life From War Games
Like most dads who have professional careers, I have little time for games. Nevertheless, I spend some time playing war games. These games have taught me some basic...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog