A team of Australians (and some yanks) won the prestigious ACM Gordon Bell prize for 2024 that recognises "outstanding achievement in high-performance computing". University of Melbourne Associate Professor Giuseppe Barca and his team were named winners this morning, acknowledging their research "Breaking the Million-Electron and 1 EFLOP/s Barriers: Biomolecular-Scale Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Using MP2 Potentials". That's a lot of floating point operations! This "breakthrough in HPC and quantum chemistry, announced in July 2024, will enable scientists to simulate drug behaviour with an accuracy that rivals physical experiments. This means they can now observe not just the movement of a drug, but also its quantum mechanical properties, such as bond breaking and formation, over time in a biological system". Thanks Josh for mentioning it in The Sizzle's Slack group.
The privacy commissioner has given a fresh slap on the wrist to two property companies run by shameless individual Dominique Grubisa. From the OAIC's press release: "participants of the companies' Elite Mentoring Program were encouraged to find 'distressed properties' in circumstances where a property owner might be incentivised to sell their property below market value as result of divorce, bankruptcy or a deceased estate", which were collected from "court lists and databases for inclusion in their weekly leads lists, and whose personal information they subsequently disclosed to participants". The OAIC reckons Grubisa and mates "did not collect the personal information of individuals by fair means" and did so "contrary to the terms and conditions of the third parties’ websites and databases and in circumstances where those individuals had no knowledge or awareness of the collection".
About 1500 Woolworths distribution centre workers are on an indefinite strike right now and one of their key issues beside pay is "The Framework", a horrible dystopian sounding computer system Woolworths uses to manage each worker's day down to the minute. This relentless push to turn each human into a robot is understandably driving workers crazy and as part of their new EBA discussions, they want it removed but Woolworths is refusing, hence the strike. This is invasive workplace surveillance that's only really possible due to technology and a tech industry selling it to companies like Woolworths to abuse. The Conversation and The Guardian have good overview of The Framework. Meanwhile, Coles announced yesterday (while the strike is happening!) that they will be working with Microsoft to "deliver a number of AI use cases" including to "improve store-to-store efficiency".
Nature has a story about PsiQuantum - that company almost $1b of our taxpayer dollars are going to so they can attempt to build a "useful" quantum computer that "can outperform classical machines". That's cool an all, but Nature raises the question that it's kinda bullshit still. Despite all the buzz and the billions of dollars raised, they have "very little" to show for it and quotes multiple researchers at other institutions skeptical of PsiQuantum's claims, but do think their approach is "really worth exploring". The article also has a good explanation of how PsiQuantum's computer plans are different to the rest of the industry.
Apple (2011) LI Lihong. Apple melds the universally recognised symbol of computer and electronics company Apple Inc., which entered the Chinese market in 1993, with an overall decoration of brightly coloured flowers known as the ‘One Hundred Flowers’ motif. This motif was popular with the Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) and symbolised a wish for the Qing empire (1644–1912) to last as long as flowers bloom in the world. (National Gallery of Victoria)
📻 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Big Fig Wasp
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