Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Towards Socialogical Systems
In the Future of the CIO: Future From a Mechanical to Sociological System. Is this a digital shift? An academic view.
From Schneier on Security
HEADWATER: NSA Exploit of the Day
Today's implant from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog:
HEADWATER (TS//SI//REL) HEADWATER is a Persistent Backdoor (PDB) software implant for selected Huawei routers. The implant will enable covert…From Computational Complexity
A short History of Crypto
I taught a 3-week summer course to High School Students called
Computer Science: A Hands Off Approachwhich did some theory. One thing I did was the following storyline:
From My Biased Coin
Andreessen Tweets
My brother pointed me to this article on a great exchange of tweets about the origins of Netscape. The two highlights, for me at least. First, Andreessen expressed a philosophy that I believe in, but I don't think most university…
From The Eponymous Pickle
MIT Comp Sci Prof Explains Quantum Computing
A relatively non technical article in the WSJ on the state of Quantum computing, An interview about what it is, what it might be good for, and where it may be going. In particular the implications for cryptography are significant…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Convincing People that Smartphone Shopping is Safe
Recent events have made this more difficult, but the solutions and behavior needed are still there. What is the particular nature of the Smartphone that makes it more or less safe? :Convincing Customers Smartphone Shopping Is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Growing Scope of the Internet of Things
Gartner says it will grow 30 time to 26 billion by 2020. My guess that it will grow even larger, as more devices, some that we were not expecting, come online. Vehicles, and their individual components, are a growing example…
From Schneier on Security
Debunking the "NSA Mass Surveillance Could Have Stopped 9/11" Myth
It's something that we're hearing a lot, both from NSA Director General Keith Alexander and others: the NSA's mass surveillance programs could have stopped 9/11. It's not true, and recently two people have published good essays…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teachers and Role Models in CS Education
There was an interesting bit of chatting going on over Twitter about the importance of teachers as role models over the weekend. A lot of people think that having more computer science teachers of color and more female teachers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gardeners vs Architects
In Innovation Excellence: A kind of designer vs analytics argument that is interesting. We dealt with this when we added a design function. But like in this area a good hybrid of the two is most valuable. You should always…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Teaching Functional Programming With A Chicken That Crosses the Road
I'm currently teaching a third year course on programming paradigms. For functional programming we look at Scheme, and for logic programming, Prolog. I took this course when I was an undergrad, and it looks like not much has…
From Schneier on Security
SOUFFLETROUGH: NSA Exploit of the Day
One of the top secret NSA documents published by Der Spiegel is a 50-page catalog of "implants" from the NSA's Tailored Access Group. Because the individual implants are so varied and we saw so many at once, most of them were…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
So What Now?
The Hour of Code was a great success and you may have had more interest than ever before in computer science, but what do you do with all that momentum? How do you help students and other teachers keep interest in computer science…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Her - The Movie Influences User Interface
Back when I was giving talks at our innovation centers, the most frequently mentioned media was the move 'Minority Report'. Then just out and portraying an advertising laced media world. And that was just when smartphones had…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visualizing Unstructured Data
Good overview of the topic. Examples like 'word clouds' are typical. And semantic nets that we used to represent the interaction between terms. Concept maps can also be loaded with information based on semantic extracts of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
WiFi in the Internet of Things
In Ara Technica: Fairly obvious that many things will be connected wirelessly. A home or business is an aggregation of things that need to be connected to joint sensors and resources. " .... Whether it’s the Connected Home…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of January 13
January 14 Hearing: The Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the scope of copyright protection. 10 a.m., 2141 Rayburn Building The Senate Homeland…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Keyboard for Wearable Computing
Just brought to my attention by Lars Asplund: SenseBoard" ... The New Technology that can give you a Virtual keyboard, a mouse, or a gesture sensitive device to be used for wearable computing .... More details here on this.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Power of Networks
Crucially its about how to set up, evolve and utilize our networks."The Power of NetworksWhat can a network learn that an individual cannot?By MIT Technology Review Custom on November 14, 2013 We asked this question because we…
From Schneier on Security
How the NSA Threatens National Security
Secret NSA eavesdropping is still in the news. Details about once secret programs continue to leak. The Director of National Intelligence has recently declassified additional information, and the President's Review Group has …
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 13 January 2014
Highlight this week? Free and inexpensive books! And some links to interesting news and discussions about women and others in AP CS classes. And more so read through the whole list. Thanks.
At Last - CS Gender Equity in Multiple…From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Partners for Artificial Intelligence
Facebook joins NYU for AI Lab. They certainly have a lot of social data. Part of a new push towards practical, Big Data oriented AI. IBM's Watson is another example. " .... Facebook unveiled plans Monday on a partnership…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Details Left To The Reader…
The buck stops here—on a blog, that is Stasys Jukna has written a comprehensive book on Boolean circuit complexity, called Boolean Function Complexity: Advances and Frontiers. It includes a discussion of Mike Fischer’s Theorem…
From Putting People First
[Book] Design Transitions
![[Book] Design Transitions](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
Design Transitions – Inspiring Stories. Global Viewpoints. How design is changing. By Joyce Yee, Emma Jefferies and Lauren Tan BIS Publishers [Book site - Amazon link - selected pages] Abstract Design Transitions presents 42…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Drives Big Data Analytics and Visualization
Listened to these announcements, and the link to analytics is particularly interesting:" ... IBM Watson Analytics aims to remove common impediments in the data discovery process, enabling business users to quickly and independently…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Furniture Augmented Reality
Now an App from the prolific Augmented Pixels company. Think of these applications as mixing real life contexts and digital contexts. Note some similarities to the AR applications included in the IKEA catalogs. Will be testing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Does Big Data Look Like?
In Wired: The more complex, large and volatile a database is, the more important it is to understand it first with visualization. As I often preach: The first thing you should do with your data is to look at it, and then interactively…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shaping Behavior in Real Time
Devices are already shaping our behavior in real time, but not always to our advantage. Experientia makes the claim that this is a frontier of design. Sensors, analytics and signals make this all possible.
From Putting People First
The new design: social innovation inspiring business innovation
Cheryl Heller of CommonWise argues that there’s a new design emerging that works from inside a community and at a systems level, impacting human relationships instead of things. It emerges from the new discipline of design for…
From Putting People First
Design’s next big frontier? Shaping behavior in real time
Small devices with embedded intelligence can do more than just measure; they’re showing their potential to change the way we act, writes Sean Madden in Fast Company. “For the first time, we have in essence a kit of parts–sensors…