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
Samsung Does New Bixby Interface in Major Update
Been a long time since we had an unimpressed look at Bixby. Some good details here.
Samsung Reveals New Bixby Interface and Features in Major Update By Eric Hal Schwartz in Voicebot.ai
Samsung has officially announced plans…From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning Underspecification
Yes, often a problem, often mainly for lack of sufficient data in context. Seems Google know this too. Key issue. Credibility/value is the key. Note COVID example. Technical.
Googlers Speak Out on the Scourge of ML Underspecification…From The Eponymous Pickle
Podcasts via RSS Feed
From Geeking with Greg
Facebook and investing in the long-term
Kevin Roose, Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel at the New York Times had a great piece ([1][2]) on the internal debate inside Facebook on removing disinformation: Facebook engineers and data scientists posted the results of a series…
From insideHPC
‘Let’s Talk Exascale’: Storing and Managing Exa-class Data Volumes
In this new edition of “Let’s Talk Exascale” from the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project, the ECP’s Scott Gibson talks with Jim Ahrens of Los Alamos National Laboratory about the project’s data and visualization…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Risk and Uncertainty of it All
A space we played in early on, determining measures of uncertainty as we built AI and expert system based models. Its part of any decision driving system, That includes measures of uncertainty and risk. Glad to see efforts…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Small Sat Launching by Drone
Been watching the numerous satellite launches going on, like primarily to improve communications to remote areas. Agree with some of the worries for the future, will we be able to see the stars in future years? Will kidsHuge…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shrinking BERT Networks to Model Language
Considerable shrinking of neural networks, more likely for applications at the Edge.
A new approach could lower computing costs and increase accessibility to state-of-the…From Schneier on Security
The 2020 Workshop on Economics and Information Security (WEIS)
The workshop on Economics and Information Security is always an interesting conference. This year, it will be online. Here’s the program. Registration is free.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robotic Hands Closer to Human
New robotic hands with lots of possibilities for more dexterous manipulation
Robot Hands One Step Closer to Human, Thanks to WMG AI Algorithms By University of Warwick (U.K.)
Artificial intelligence algorithms enable the Shadow…From Schneier on Security
Enigma Machine Recovered from the Baltic Sea
Neat story:
German divers searching the Baltic Sea for discarded fishing nets have stumbled upon a rare Enigma cipher machine used by the Nazi military during World War Two which they believe was thrown overboard from a scuttled…From The Eponymous Pickle
IRS to Make ID Protection PIN Open to All
Good direction. Now how will it be effectively used? See more detail at the link.
IRS to Make ID Protection PIN Open to All in Krebs On Security
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said this week that beginning in 2021…From The Eponymous Pickle
Considering Orbit in Developer Relations
Read about this in Andreessen Horowitz. About better online communities. Involved in an effort that will need some of this.
Investing in Orbit by Martin Casado
Great communities make great companies, and community-building is…From BLOG@CACM
Computer Systems Research: The Joys, the Perils, and How to Count Beans Well
This post is meant to highlight my subjective take on the joys and the road bumps on the way to doing innovative work in computer systems.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Discusses How it Organizes Information
Below the introduction. Informative.
How Google organizes information to find what you’re looking for
By Nick Fox in the Google Blog
Vice President of Product & Design, Search and Assistant
When you come to Google and do a search…From The Eponymous Pickle
Texting to Alexa
Noted for using voice in specific context. Say for the need of privacy in conversation.
Amazon now lets you text Alexa on iOS to ask for things instead of only using your voice
By Chaim Gartenberg in MSN.com via WalterAmazon…From The Eponymous Pickle
Are Smart Things Really Smart?
Interesting challenge. Depends on what 'smart' means. Like what I have often said, its in a 'context'. Smart can be exactly what it needs to be to provide value ... or not. Marketing tries to enhance the link. Sometimes…
From insideHPC
Announcing The Rich Brueckner Scholarship Awards and GoFundMe Account
Rich Brueckner was one of the most influential (and beloved) figures in high performance computing. As editor-in-chief of insideHPC, he touched thousands of lives in our industry. He was a fixture at every HPC event as he walked…
From insideHPC
Ayar Labs Demonstrates Optical Interconnect Solution on GlobalFoundries’ Silicon Photonics Manufacturing Process
Santa Clara, CA, Dec. 2, 2020 –Ayar Labs announced it has successfully demonstrated its patented monolithic electronic/photonic solution on GlobalFoundries’ (GF) next generation photonics technology based on its 45nm platform…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Announcing New ICMI 2021 Blue Sky Papers Track
The 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2021) will be held in Montreal, Canada October 18-22, 2021. ICMI is the premier international forum for multidisciplinary research on multimodal human-human…
From insideHPC
Creators of MLPerf Launch MLCommons Consortium for Machine Learning Benchmarks, Metrics, Datasets, Models and Best Practices
SAN FRANCISCO – Dec. 3, 2020 – Today, open engineering consortium MLCommons launched an industry-academic partnership to accelerate machine learning innovation and broaden access to this critical technology for the public good…
From insideHPC
Lenovo Launches Storage Array, Data Management Solutions
Lenovo Data Center Group today launched edge-core-cloud data management solutions with a single set of tools and capabilities. Part of the Lenovo DM Series of storage systems, the ThinkSystem DM5100F is designed to brings high…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google General Voice Accessibility
In the Google Blog, a means of more general voice accessibility via voice on the android phone. Now updated.
ACCESSIBILITY
Use Voice Access to control your Android device with your voice
Easily use and navigate your phone byTom…From Schneier on Security
Open Source Does Not Equal Secure
Way back in 1999, I wrote about open-source software:
First, simply publishing the code does not automatically mean that people will examine it for security flaws. Security researchers are fickle and busy people. They do not…From The Eponymous Pickle
Using VisiRule to Create Chatbots
Had been looking for an easy way to create chatbots that include FAQ's. Recalled a company called VisiRule that supported rule-based expert systems. Visirule has been mentioned many times in this blog, see tag below. Decision…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alphabet's Loon Balloons for Internet Connectivity
Application of the general idea is expanding. Here with autonomous navigation.
Alphabet's Loon Balloons in Internet Connectivity
Alphabet’s Loon hands the reins of its internet air balloons to self-learning AI. The company’s…From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
womENcourage 2020 Took Place Online, 24-27th September
We are delighted to host guests on ACM-W Europe blog, and this quarter we had fantastic contributions.
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Updates on ACM-W Scholarship for Attendance of Research Conferences
Yelena Mejova is a Senior Research Scientist at the ISI Foundation in Turin, Italy, a part of the Digital Epidemiology Group. Her research concerns the use of social media in health informatics, as well as tracking political…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Detecting Scientific Conflicts of Interest
With other kinds of application in compliance. But see the note about subjective aspects.
Do You Have a Conflict of Interest? This Robotic Assistant May Find It First
The New York Times, Dalmeet Singh Chawla
Frontiers, a Swiss…From Computational Complexity
Chess is Back
Back in 2005, I wrote a post titled Chess and Poker. Not really comparing the two but noting that Chess had lost its mojo while poker had high-stakes prime time tournaments. The inspiration was an NYT Op-Ed that started "CHESS…