Fragile: Python, sudo, AI

How Many Episodes, Did You Say?!

The show is geographically skewed today with all three hosts on the west coast. Henry is gracing Seattle with his presence, resulting in plunging coffee inventories and skyrocketing sushi prices.

The first item of discussion is a problem in the scientific software world. There’s a bug in Python scripts that caused different results in identical routines run on different operating systems. For example, the results on macOS Maverick and Windows 10 were significantly different than results from the same application run on Ubuntu 16 and macOS Mojave. As the guys discuss, it’s not a Python thing but a problem with the order in which files got read according to the operating system’s protocols. This impacts the sort order and thus the end results. This reminds Dan and Shahin of, as Dan regards it, the crime that is IEEE Floating Point. The gang speculates on other causes of these types of problems and the fixes that should be employed.

Chemists bitten by Python scripts: How different OSes produced different results during test number-crunching

Chemistry boffins at the University of Hawaii have found, rather disturbingly, that different computer operating systems running a particular set of Python scripts used for their research can produce different results when running the same code.

Why No One Should Be Online - Ever (WNOSBOE?)

In Henry’s signature feature “Why No One Should Be Online. Ever” he discusses how a stalker in Japan was trying to pin down the location of a female pop star. He used her selfies posted online to closely examine the reflection in her eyes, then using Google street view to find out where she lives. Very scary stuff. Listen to the show for more details. It leads to a brief conversation of whether Henry Newman is stalk-worthy and an extended discussion of how to avoid this type of thing.

Stalking suspect allegedly studied pop idol's pupil images online to find her location

The man allegedly studied reflections of the woman's pupils in photos on social media and using Google Street View to find where she lived and what train stations she used.

Why AI is Dooming Us All (WAIIDUA?)

Dan introduces a new occasional feature, “Why AI is Dooming Us All.” According to Dan, AI is very brittle and can be fooled easily. He cites a case where just a few pieces of tape can make a stop sign look like a “Speed 45” sign to an AI. Dan makes a lot of broad general anti-AI statements in his typical fashion. For some reason, we find that when you attack AI, AI finds a way to respond and the brutal AI response is included in this episode. Take a listen to the episode to hear how the AI rips Dan a new one and threatens promises to ruin his life.

Artificial intelligence isn’t very intelligent and won’t be any time soon

For all of the recent advances in artificial intelligence, machines still struggle with common sense

Catch of the Week

Henry:  there is a great documentary about the history of computing in Minnesota, going in depth on the companies and technologies that originated in “The Star of the North” (Minnesota’s state motto. Their other state motto is, I think, “Minnesota:  Gateway to the Dakotas”).

Shahin:  Gives us an update on Facebook’s plans for their shiny new Libra cryptocurrency, which is facing a bit of a bumpy ride. Several high-profile Libre partners have bailed out while Facebook stays the course. Interesting stuff.

Dan:  Discusses a bug in the Linux Sudo command. Some miss-configured systems allow Sudo to have local/remote root access, thus making them superusers. He also manages to insult Phil Collins and his horrible Su-Su-Sudio song in the process. The guys discuss asking Linus Torvalds this question and Dan brings up how a person he knows once sold Linus a Christmas tree, which brings up a short discussion of what kind of tree Linus would purchase.

Just Another Episode

Finally, we're not so taken by round numbers these days, but we touch on the fact that this is our 250^th RadioFreeHPC episode and offer great prizes to whoever has listened to all of our episodes. We also thank our listeners – like you, maybe we could do it without you, but it wouldn’t be very much fun, right?

Stay tuned -- and by "tuned", we mean "optimized" -- for a more proper commemoration in another episode.

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FinTech and HPC-AI

@RadioFreeHPC Has Entered The Building

First things first, you can call us @RadioFreeHPC now, thanks to our new Twitter account. We decided maybe this social media thing is not a fad after all. We are also pleased to inform you that our Twitter account is almost as heavily followed as the podcast itself. Thank you! We should be up to about 6 or 7 followers by the time you read this. Good thing we allocated 64 full bits to track the number.

FinTech and HPC-AI

Shahin gives an update on the HPC-AI on Wall Street conference. We discuss the well-received Cryptocurrency panel that he moderated, the challenges of using of AI in financial services, the emerging computational storage, and advanced HPC-class modeling that helps venture capital investors decide whether to invest in a startup. Check out his blog on the panel and top-10 crypto topics of the day here:

Top-10 Crypto/Blockchain Topics

Why? What’s the big deal? Blockchain or Crypto? ICOs Political Support Libra Apps Security Other Coins Digital Assets Smart Contracts

Henry Newman's Why No One Should be Online, Ever.

Once again, Henry actually has good news, and once again, it's the kind of good news that highlights the bad news.

Man Who Hired Deadly Swatting Gets 15 Months

An Ohio teen who recruited a convicted serial “swatter” to fake a distress call that ended in the police shooting an innocent Kansas man in 2017 has been sentenced to 15 months in prison. “Swatting” is a dangerous hoax that involves making false claims to emergency responders about phony hostage situations or bomb threats, with the intention of prompting a heavily-armed police response to the location of the claimed incident.

Catch of the Week

Shahin talks about France and Germany planning to block the Libra cryptocurrency. Henry and Dan think this is a good time to say "we told you so"! Nobody's surprised, though Shahin thinks this is the beginning of this, not the end.

Germany's Scholz: We cannot accept parallel currencies such as Facebook's Libra

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday policymakers could not accept the emergence of parallel currencies such as Facebook’s planned Libra, adding that Berlin would reject any such plans. Facebook’s planned Libra is the most well-known of the stablecoins, a certain form of cryptocurrency backed by assets such as traditional money deposits, short-term government securities or gold.

Henry doesnt know whether to laugh or cry as he describes some of the "ignoble" prize winners and wonders how they ever got funded.

Magnetic cockroaches, dirty money, wombat poo and posties' balls: It's the Ig Nobels 2019

This year's theme was 'habits' and they were baaaaad The Annals of Improbable Research held its annual award-giving ceremony – the Ig Nobel Prize – on Thursday night at Harvard's Sanders Theatre, and the entries were as worthy as ever.

Dan talks about the call-center scammer whose plea deal backfires:

Call-center scammer loses $9m appeal in stunning moment of poetic justice

But I only expected to pay $250,000, wails scumbag to wall of blank faces. A call-center scammer has lost his appeal to overturn a $9m fine – after a court pointed out the crook had specifically waived the right to appeal when he pleaded guilty.

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TOP500 Jun2019, Facebook Coin

The new TOP500 list of most powerful supercomputers is out and we do our usual quick analysis. Not much changed in the TOP10 but a lot is changing further down the list. Here is a quick take:

• There are 65 new entries in 2019.
• US science is receiving support via DOE sites and academic sites like TACC.
• 26 countries are represented. China continues to widen its lead, now with 219 entries, followed by the US with 116, Japan with 29, France with 19, the UK with 18, Germany with 14, Ireland and the Netherlands with 13 each, and Singapore with 10.
• Vendors substantially reflect the country standings. Lenovo has 175 entries, Inspur 71, and Sugon 63, all in China. Cray with 42 and HPE with 40 (which will combine when their deal closes), followed by Dell at 17 and IBM at 16.  Bull has 21 entries.
• There are a lot of "accidental supercomputers" on the list. These are systems that probably are not be doing much science or AI work but they could, and the vendors counted them and it seems to be within the rules to list them. It's controversial but not a new practice.
• There are several systems listed as "Internet" companies. Hard to tell what that means but it points to the existence of very large clusters in the cloud for whatever purpose. Last year, there was one system listed as Amazon EC2, which remains on the list. This time, there is also one at Facebook. Usually the big social/cloud players don't care to participate, though they obviously could summon the resources to run the benchmarks.
• Just over half of systems use Ethernet as a fabric. A quarter us InfiniBand, nearly 50 use Intel's OmniPath, and the rest, 55, use custom interconnects like the ones Cray provides. The team talks about Cray+HPE entering the interconnect business for real and if so, they will be formidable.
• The majority of entries, 367, do not have any accelerators. 125 use Nvidia GPUs.
• The overwhelming majority of the systems, 478 of them, are based on Intel CPUs. 13 are IBM, and there is 1 system based on Arm provided by Cavium, now part of Marvell.
• So the when it comes to chips, it's an Intel game with a respectable showing by Nvidia when GPUs are used. Alternatives are bound to appear as the tens and tens of AI chips in the works become available and Arm, AMD, and IBM build on. The recently announced system at Oakridge will be all AMD, and that will point to an alternative as well.
• Notably, Intel is listed as the vendor for 2 entries and Nvidia is listed for 4. While Intel has stayed largely away from looking like a system vendor, Nvidia is going for it with its usual alacrity. That, and the pending acquisition of Mellanox by Nvidia should serve as a warning to all system vendors who might feel stuck between treating Nvidia as an important supplier and an up and coming competitor.

CryptoSuper500

Shahin mentions the 2nd edition of the CryptoSuper500 list (really 50 for now), a list developed by his colleague Dr. Stephen Perrenod, which was launched last November, and is being released at the same time as the TOP500. The TOP500 has spawned variations that look at different workloads and attributes, for example, the Green500, Graph500, and IO500 lists. CryptoSuper500 was inspired by those lists. The material for the inaugural edition of the CryptoSuper500 list here.
Cryptocurrency mining operations are often pooled and are very much supercomputing class, typically using accelerator technologies such as custom ASICs, FPGAs, or GPUs. Bitcoin is the most notable of such currencies. Scroll down for the top-10 list and see the slides for the full list and the methodology.

Catch of the Week

Henry:

Henry talks about check-out lanes at Target all being down for unknown reasons, though he hesitates to call that a cybersecurity breach. It turned out he's right and the company blamed an "internal technology issue".

Target down (then back up) as cash registers fail and leave long lines

Target's payment systems appeared to be missing the mark the day before Father's Day, as terminals went AWOL for a couple of hours in a number of the company's US retail outlets. The outage caused long lines but prompted an encouraging show of sympathy for Target employees from people on Twitter. And there were some jokes too, of course.

Shahin:

Facebook is expected to release a new cryptocurrency that is already impacting the crypto market.

Here’s what we know so far about the secretive Facebook coin

Facebook is likely to release information about its secretive cryptocurrency project, codenamed Libra, as soon as June 18, TechCrunch reports.

As is traditional with new cryptocurrencies, the social networking giant is expected to release a so-called “white paper” outlining how the currency works and the company’s plans for it.

Dan:

Dan reminds us all of the inimitable Erich Anton Paul von Däniken and his ancient astronauts hypotheses!

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