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 Computational Complexity
Short Bits
Because some things are too long to tweet and too short for their own blog post. What's the algorithm for the perfect sushi? Enjoy it with some cool refreshing...
From Computational Complexity
Penn State
Take the state of Pennsylvania and draw the two diagonals. Where they cross is the small town of State College, home of the Pennsylvania State University. I first...
From Computational Complexity
Making Money the (Computationally) Hard Way
Digital cash systems have come and gone but Bitcoin seems to be doing okay. By request I am giving a lecture about Bitcoin in my crypto class. Most of the material...
From Computational Complexity
The Annual Fall Jobs Post
For these looking for an academic job in computer science next year, best to start on the jobs pages of the CRA and the ACM. Both lists seem long this year, perhaps...
From Computational Complexity
Journals
What is the purpose of an academic journal? To provide a permanent vetted record of a specific research endeavor. The ways we communicate scientific research...
From Computational Complexity
The Digital Random Bit Generator
I started this month asking about the nature of randomness and how we generate it for our computers. Let me end the month talking about Intel's clever new digital...
From Computational Complexity
John McCarthy (1927-2011)
First Steve and then Dennis and now we have the death of a third computing pioneer this month. John McCarthy passed away earlier this week at the age of 84. McCarthy...
From Computational Complexity
It's Open Access Week
Open Access Week starts today. Interestingly a number of traditional journal publishers, like Springer, are sponsors as they try to figure out how to modify their...
From Computational Complexity
The Cup Holder Principle
The story goes that when Toyota engineers started to design the first cup holders in the 80's, they went to a local 7-11 and got every different cup 7-11 had to...
From Computational Complexity
Teaching PCPs to Undergrads
The last few times I've taught undergraduate theory I cover the PCP theorem. It's not complicated if you state it the right way: PCP Theorem: For any constant...
From Computational Complexity
Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011)
We lost another computing pioneer of a very different kind. Dennis Ritchie, who developed C and co-developed Unix, passed away last weekend. Ritchie and Ken Thompson...
From Computational Complexity
More than East and West
The Obama Campaign is creating a Campaign Analytics Team. Love Data, Predictive Analytics, Social Media and Politics? The Analytics team for the Obama Campaign...
From Computational Complexity
Steve Jobs 1955-2011
It's one of those events. You'll always remember where you were when you heard that Steve Jobs passed away. I was at dinner with several visiting computer scientists...
From Computational Complexity
What is Random?
One can get into great philosophical debates on what is randomness. Information that we can't compress. Information that's unpredictable. Information that we are...
From Computational Complexity
Bibliographies
Lots of buzz about Princeton's new policy that prevents faculty from giving away the right to publish papers on their own web pages. Never seen faculty so happy...
From Computational Complexity
Moneyball
I saw Moneyball over the weekend. This movie gives a fictionalized account of the how the general manager of the 2002 Oakland A's used the right kind of statistics...
From Computational Complexity
Mahaney's Theorem
Bill has a lot of posts where he questions whether to teach Mahaney's theorem in a graduate complexity class. Since it is one of my favorite theorems and most of...
From Computational Complexity
Conferences Again
Lots of conference news and views going around. Let's sort it out. FOCS early registration deadline is September 29th, fast approaching. Deadline for applyingstudent...
From Computational Complexity
Happy Constitution Day
September 17th officially is known in the United States as "Constitution Day and Citizenship Day" but is celebrated today because the 17th this year falls on aConstitution...
From Computational Complexity