And Should you Care? This is about the reproducibility of results in Computer Systems. The papers that we shed blood, sweat, and tears for getting into our hyper-competitive conferences (definitely the latter two, the first is not widely documented). Are they helping us progress as fast and as efficiently as they could? Are our software […]
Category: Computer Science-y
Internet at 50 Years: Hills to Climb
Citation In this second of my two part reflection on the internet at its 50th birthday, I turn my eyes toward three challenges the medium has to solve. I then list from a bird’s eye view some of the most important solutions being investigated in academia to fix these. In customary braggadocio, I include some […]
Internet at 50 years: Celebrating Three Victories
Citation The internet had a rather unobtrusive 50th birthday on October 29, 2019, celebrated in a low-key style mainly in the quiet hallways frequented by technologists. It has come a long way from the first unintended message “lo” sent by Leonard Kleinrock and Charley Kline in UCLA to SRI in Menlo Park. Much has been […]
Short Take: Policy Issues to Beat the Autocracy of Autonomous Systems
In a previous post, I discussed, through a dystopian scenario, how autonomous systems can reduce our lives to one of hapless destiny. And in the last post, I discussed some design and development principles that we as technologists can follow that can help us avoid plunging into such dystopian scenarios. In this article, I will […]
Short Take: Beating the Autocracy of Autonomous Systems
In the previous post, I discussed through a dystopian scenario, a manifestation of how autonomous systems can reduce our lives to one of hapless destiny. I believe that we as technologists can develop technologies with some guiding principles that can help us avoid plunging into such dystopian scenarios, under most cases. I also believe that […]
Predictive AI for Reliability and Security
Citation In the computer systems field, we use AI, or its more trendy cousin, Machine Learning for predictive reliability and security all the time. This means we take action in anticipation of failure of a computer system to make sure it continues to function reliably and securely. The question is does this translate beyond the […]
Flitting between the Virtual and the Real Worlds
Citation We increasingly live in two worlds — the virtual one of our tablets and our HoloLenses, and the real one of paper books, soccer balls, and winding trails through spring blossoms. We have gotten better flitting between these two worlds as well — poring over our laptops during the conference session and then lifting […]
The Internet of Insecure Things
Citation We are moving into a world of internet connected things. This is the world where your aging grandmother’s medicine cabinet reminds her when her medication has become due, when the irregular heart beat of your father triggers the scheduling of a cardio checkup, and when the home automation device decides that lowering the temperature […]
Distant Whispers from an Academic Engineer's World 