Jake Widman

Aug 15, 2024 | cacm.acm.org | James Grimmelmann |R. Colin Johnson |Jake Widman |Doug Meil

Almost everyone who uses social media agrees that sooner or later you need to use the block button. Maybe it is a spammer who wants you to buy an obscure cryptocurrency, maybe it is an obsessive sports fan who directs obscene tirades at fans of rival teams, or maybe it is a stalker who keeps showing up in your mentions. People have all kinds of good reasons for blocking other users. But in at least some situations, the Supreme Court held this spring in a case called Lindke v.

Aug 14, 2024 | cacm.acm.org | R. Colin Johnson |Jake Widman |Doug Meil

The explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted the datacenter giants—including Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft (whose datacenters run most AI software)—to start building super-sized hyperscale datacenters that require much more power—gigawatts instead of megawatts. These giant datacenters use existing semiconductor technology that challenges aging U.S. electrical grid infrastructure to meet their energy consumption needs, according to analysts.

Aug 13, 2024 | cacm.acm.org | Jake Widman |Doug Meil |Bennie Mols |Herbert Bruderer

Conventional wisdom has consigned the facsimile to the dustbin of obsolete technology, along with answering machines and Rolodexes. One tech observer summed up this view in 2020, writing that “the rise of personal computing, the Internet, specifically email, and the advent of the PDF file format all colluded to kill the fax machine.”As it turns out, reports of faxing’s death are greatly exaggerated.