Move Over, Moore’s Law: Make Way for Huang’s Law Graphics processors are on a supercharged development path that eclipses Moore’s Law, says Nvidia’s Jensen Huang

https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/hardware/move-over-moores-law-make-way-for-huangs-law

WINDOWS 95 IS 25 YEARS OLD TODAY

 https://www.theverge.com/21398999/windows-95-anniversary-release-date-history

The U.S. video-conferencing company Zoom closed the account of a group of prominent U.S.-based Chinese activists after they held a Zoom event commemorating the 31st anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre

https://www.axios.com/zoom-closes-chinese-user-account-tiananmen-square-f218fed1-69af-4bdd-aac4-7eaf67f34084.html

The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI. This is his untold story.

https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-marcus-hutchins-hacker-who-saved-the-internet/

Nvidia’s GameGAN AI Creates Pac-Man Without an Underlying Game Engine. The reason advances like GameGAN strike me as significant is because they don’t just represent an AI learning how to play a game. The AI is actually learning something about how the game is implemented purely from watching someone else play it. That’s closer, conceptually, to how humans learn

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/310886-level-up-nvidias-gamegan-ai-creates-pac-man-without-an-underlying-game-engine

Microsoft: We Were on ‘The Wrong Side of History’ With Open Source

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/310688-microsoft-we-were-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-with-open-source

Chinese internet users who uploaded coronavirus memories to GitHub have been arrested

https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-coronavirus-memories-page/

Apple Watch Outsells the Entire Swiss Watch Industry in 2019

https://news.strategyanalytics.com/press-release/devices/strategy-analytics-apple-watch-outsells-entire-swiss-watch-industry-2019

Tale of the tape: Why film fans are dropping Netflix for physical media. "[Streaming services] like to present the image of having a comprehensive library, but the irony is there's like ten of them now and they all want to be the only game in town, and even between all of them combined they still don't cover even a fraction of film history."

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/tale-of-the-tape-why-film-fans-are-dropping-netflix-for-physical-media-20191115-p53b1o.html

Google’s ‘Quantum Supremacy’ Isn’t the End of Encryption. As Preskill notes, that contest was uneven. Google carefully chose a problem naturally suited to its quantum hardware and writes in its paper that “technical leaps” are still needed to realize the promise of quantum computing. Dowling and others estimate it would take millions of high-quality qubit devices to threaten encryption, due to the complexity of the algorithms involved.

https://www.wired.com/story/googles-quantum-supremacy-isnt-end-encryption/

In Douglas Adams' sci-fi series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a pair of programmers task the galaxy's largest supercomputer with answering the ultimate question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything. After 7.5 million years of processing, the computer reaches an answer: 42. Only then do the programmers realize that nobody knew the question the program was meant to answer. Now, in this week's most satisfying example of life reflecting art, a pair of mathematicians have used a global network of 500,000 computers to solve a centuries-old math puzzle that just happens to involve that most crucial number: 42.

https://www.livescience.com/diophantine-42-solved-meaning-of-life.html

IBM is acquiring Red Hat, a major distributor of open-source software and technology, in a deal valued around $34 billion, the companies announced on Sunday. Red Hat started 25 years ago as a distributor of a particular flavor of Linux, an open-source operating system that is commonly used in server computers that power company data centers. Today, Red Hat is known for distributing and supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as other technologies commonly used in data centers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/28/ibm-to-acquire-red-hat-in-deal-valued-at-34-billion.html

Keller doesn’t agree. “The working title for this talk was ‘Moore’s law is not dead but if you think so you’re stupid,’" he said Sunday. He asserted that Intel can keep it going and supply tech companies ever more computing power. His argument rests in part on redefining Moore’s law. “I’m not pedantic about Moore’s law talking just about transistors shrinking—I’m interested in the technology trends and the physics and metaphysics around that,” Keller says. “Moore’s law is a collective delusion shared by millions of people.” Keller also said that Intel would need to try other tactics, such as building vertically, layering transistors or chips on top of each other. He claimed this approach will keep power consumption down by shortening the distance between different parts of a chip. Keller said that using nanowires and stacking his team had mapped a path to packing transistors 50 times more densely than possible with Intel's 10 nanometer generation of technology.

https://www.wired.com/story/intels-new-chip-wizard-plan-bring-back-magic/

THE GODFATHERS OF THE AI BOOM WIN COMPUTING’S HIGHEST HONOR

https://www.wired.com/story/godfathers-ai-boom-win-computings-highest-honor/

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms. Last week Victor Stinner, a Python developer who works for Red Hat, published four pull requests seeking to change "master" and "slave" in Python documentation and code to terms like "parent," "worker," or something similarly anodyne.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/11/python_purges_master_and_slave_in_political_pogrom/

In Amazon's 'hellscape', workers face insecurity and crushing targets

https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/in-amazon-s-hellscape-workers-face-insecurity-and-crushing-targets-20180907-p502ao.html

n late 2017, at the Imperial War Museum in London, developers applied modern artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to break the “unbreakable” Enigma machine used by the Nazis to encrypt their correspondences in World War II. Using AI processes across 2,000 DigitalOcean servers, engineers at Enigma Pattern accomplished in 13 minutes what took Alan Turing years to do—and at a cost of just $7. I have long been fascinated by the Enigma machine and its impact on World War II. Aside from being a huge history geek, my father-in-law went over to Normandy on D+3 (three days after the Omaha beachhead was established). He served in an advance corps, finding ways for the army to move across the country, and as such, they were the first to come across one of the concentration camps and liberate it. None of that would have been possible without Enigma.

https://blog.digitalocean.com/how-2000-droplets-broke-the-enigma-code-in-13-minutes/

Microsoft confirms it will acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion

https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/04/how-to-watch-apples-wwdc-2018-livestream/

Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code Of Conduct. "Don't be evil" has been part of the company's corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, "do the right thing."

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/05/google-removes-dont-be-evil-clause-from-its-code-of-conduct/

With Vista, some machines ran at a snail’s pace. There were issues with driver and software incompatibility, and Vista consumed lots of memory. Windows 8 brought an unpopular Metro interface and the Start button disappeared, to global dismay. These days, we don’t get complete new versions of Windows. Instead, Windows 10 is progressively updated. Last month’s update is the fifth major Windows 10 upgrade.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/windows-10-upgrade-desktop-troubleshooter/news-story/f414b8f3e13dbd34e56de87a83ff8dda