This was the beginning of the tenth year of daily blogging. Excitement builds, as we count down to the tenth anniversary….
The blog continues as usual. Robots. Dinosaurs. Cryptocurrencies. Quite a bit of coverage of Earth’s Cryosphere. “Hot topics.” (Get it?)
Inevitably, there has been a burst of interest in ChatGPT and its competitors.
Which reminds me: a friend asked ChatGPT about me. I hit the jackpot! According to ChatGPT, I won the Gordon Bell Prize!
(emphasis added)
What do you know about Bob McGrath at NCSA?
Bob McGrath is a researcher at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently the Technical Program Director for the National Research Platform (NRP), which is a project aimed at creating a national cyberinfrastructure platform to support collaborative research across a wide range of domains. McGrath has been involved in the development of many important computing systems, cyberinfrastructure projects, and scientific applications, and he is particularly interested in the intersection of computing, data analysis, and scientific research. He has also been a key contributor to national and international initiatives that focus on cyberinfrastructure and advanced computing, including the US National Science Foundation’s Information and Intelligent Systems Division’s Advisory Committee and the Global Grid Forum. McGrath has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gordon Bell Prize for Supercomputing in 2001.
(Please note: Before you get all riled up, almost nothing in the above information is correct. Please don’t get mad at me because ChatGPT tells lies about me.)
(And no, I have nothing to do with the National Research Program. They’ve never heard of me, and I’ve never heard of them.)
Comment: All this chatter about “will ChatGPT take my job” seems kind of premature. I mean, unless your job requires confidently producing wrong answers, what do you have to worry about?
Band Names
As always, I have noted some Dave Barry Tribute “Great Names for a Band”. These phrases were all found in real, I-am-not-making-this-up, science and technical articles.
“Fayetteville Lacewing”
“Nonflaking percussive activities”
“The Swarmalators”
“Non-uniform chiral”
“Non-chiral”
“Bosonic Code”
“Decoherence”
“Bit-flip code”
Books
This quarter I discussed 15 books.
Non-Fiction
American Inheritance by Edward J. Larson
Inventing the World by Meredith F. Small
Meade at Gettysburg by Kent Masterson Brown
Fiction
Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes
Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron
Standing By The Wall by Mick Herron
Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron
Blitz by Daniel O’Malley
Dr. No by Percival Everett
Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Babel by R. F Kuang
The Maltese Iguana by Tim Dorsey
After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
Robert McGrath's Blog 