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 My Biased Coin
Back to Work
Harvard classes start up in a few weeks, and officially, my sabbatical is over. I'm back in my office, trying to get back into a Harvard routine.I notice thatAnalysis...
From My Biased Coin
See You in Prague
For those of you going to SPAA this coming week, I'll see you there. I'll be giving the last two talks at the conference, to what I expect (based on the timing)...
From My Biased Coin
NSF Thanks for the Year
It's that time of year where, as a background process, I have to do my annual reviews for the NSF. It's generally not a very exciting task, and their online forms...
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Sad News: Berthold Vöcking
I have just seen the news that Berthold Vöcking passed away. For those who didn't know him, Berthold was an oustanding researcher in algorithms. We had several...
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Child Geniuses and Other Articles
Stuck on a flight home, I passed time reading a hotel copy of the Wall Street Journal, to find more interesting things than I would have thought.What first caught...
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ITCS 2015
I was asked to announce the call for ITCS. Here is a link to the call for papers, with the most important info:ITCS (previously known as ICS) seeks to promote...
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What's Important in Algorithms
I saw this interesting article up on 20 questions with Don Knuth, worth reading just for the fun of it. But the following question on work in algorithm designThus...
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Reviewing Question: What's Important
Nick Feamster on Google+ recently shared (and gave me permission to blog about) the following review comment:This review comment is super enlightening:"I think...
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Postdocs in Copenhagen
I apologize for the short notice, but my occasional co-author Rasmus Pagh is looking for postdocs for a big data project he recently had funded, with an application...
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Hashing Summer School in Copenhagen
Of the many, many interesting things happening in Copenhagen this summer (SEA, ICALP) we'd like to add one more: a Hashing Summer School at the University of Copenhagen...
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Leslie Lamport wins Turing Awards
In another sign that these Turing Award committees really know what they're doing, Leslie Lamport has won the Turing Award. There's a very nice writeup including...
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ICERM (Brown) Workshop on Stochastic Graph Models
I'll be commuting throughout the week to the ICERM Workshop on Stochastic Graph Models. ICERM is the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics...
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Those who Hire vs.
If you haven't yet, I encourage you to read the Inside Higher Ed article about a department that, when a candidate they had made an offer to attempted to negotiate...
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Passing of the Professor
Sadly, "The Professor", Russell Johnson, has passed away. I enjoyed Gilligan's Island as a kid. I can't help but think that his portrayal deeply affected people's...
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Andreessen Tweets
My brother pointed me to this article on a great exchange of tweets about the origins of Netscape. The two highlights, for me at least. First, Andreessen expressed...
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Boston Magazine Piece on Aaron Swartz
If you haven't seen it, there's a well-written piece on Bob Swartz, father of Aaron Swartz, in Boston Magazine, covering MIT's reaction to Aaron Swartz's case.
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The PhD - Tenure - Jobs Argument, Already Started for 2014
'Tis the season when graduate applications are being decided as well as the job interview process starting again, and just in time for the new year, your regularly...
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Tracking down the Harvard Non-Bomber
This year, (allegedly) a Harvard student performed the modern equivalent of pulling a fire alarm in order to avoid a final exam, in this case by sending an e-mail...
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Lesson of the Day
Saturday I took two of my daughters to see a musical at Harvard. Amazingly, in the small theater, we were in front of a pair of students who seemed intent on talking...
From My Biased Coin