Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2018
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Terms We Use
Good discussion on the terms we use. With some good graphics included later in the article, click through.
Machine Learning – Can We Please Just Agree What This Means
Posted by William Vorhies in DSC
Summary: As a profession
As…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart on Personal Data
Quite an interesting piece. I have worked with the earliest Wal-Mart data systems, so this is yet more serious stuff. Historically no retailer has had more data, or used it better. Though Amazon is now rapidly catching up…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: How the Optic Lobe Controls Squid Camouflage
Experiments on the oval squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here....
From BLOG@CACM
Learning Computer Science Is Different Than Learning Other STEM Disciplines
Learning computer science has unique challenges that make it harder than learning other STEM disciplines.
From Schneier on Security
Spectre and Meltdown Attacks Against Microprocessors
The security of pretty much every computer on the planet has just gotten a lot worse, and the only real solution -- which of course is not a solution -- is to throw them all away and buy new ones. On Wednesday, researchers just…
From Schneier on Security
New Book Coming in September: "Click Here to Kill Everybody"
My next book is still on track for a September 2018 publication. Norton is still the publisher. The title is now Click Here to Kill Everybody: Peril and Promise on a Hyperconnected Planet, which I generally refer to as CH2KE.…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (January 5th, 2018)
You still have to burn more energy creating solar panels than solar panels can give back in a useful lifetime. Tyler Cowen writes: There is now a doctrine of what I call “solar triumphalism”: the price of panels has been falling…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Assistant Enabled Mirrors
More on magic mirrors, with their own embedded assistants now. So is a mirror an element of the IoT?
Verdera, an Alexa-enabled mirror from Kohler, makes your whole bathroom smart By Jenny McGrath
Some people may view their bathrooms…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Two Hardware Security Design Flaws Affect Billions of Computers
The following blog was written by CCC Vice Chair Mark D. Hill from the University of Wisconsin and CCC Cybersecurity Task Force Chair Kevin Fu from the University of Michigan. In recent days, several sources—listed below—have…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Ships BlueField SoCs and SmartNICs
Today Mellanox announced the first shipments of its BlueField system-on-chip (SoC) platforms and SmartNIC adapters to major data center, hyperscale and OEM customers. Mellanox BlueField dual-port 100Gb/s SoC is ideal for cloud…
From Computational Complexity
Which of these Math acronyms are well known?
The last time I taught Grad Ramsey Theory there were very good math grads and ugrads in it. They used some acronyms - some I knew, some I didn't know (but know now). I am sure some are well known and some are now. I don't know…
From insideHPC
Visualization on GPU Accelerated Supercomputers
Peter Messmer from NVIDIA gave this talk at SC17. "This talk is a summary about the ongoing HPC visualization activities, as well as a description of the technologies behind the developer-zone shown in the booth." Messmer is
…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Can 32-byte alignment alleviate 4K aliasing?
In my previous post, I considered some performance problems that can plague simple loops that read and write data… for (int i = 0; i < a.length; ++i) { a[i] += s * b[i]; } Once vectorized, such a loop can suffer from what Intel…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC does their List of Things Not Invited Back in 2018
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews their list of things Not Invited Back in 2018. Along the way, they share some of their New Year Resolutions.
The post Radio Free HPC does their List of Things Not Invited BackinsideHPC…
From insideHPC
Video: Deep Learning for Science
Prabhat from NERSC and Michael F. Wehner from LBNL gave this talk at the Intel HPC Developer Conference in Denver. "Deep Learning has revolutionized the fields of computer vision, speech recognition and control systems. Can Deep…
From Schneier on Security
Detecting Adblocker Blockers
Interesting research on the prevalence of adblock blockers: "Measuring and Disrupting Anti-Adblockers Using Differential Execution Analysis": Abstract: Millions of people use adblockers to remove intrusive and malicious ads as…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Contracts via Hyperledger
Brought to my attention. Good descriptions and code for experiments with the idea. I like some of the non technical descriptions of the idea provided. I like the 'Smart Contracts' direction because it pays attention to specific…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retail at Toys R Us
Retail issues:
Playing For Keeps. What Toys "R" Us Needs To Do Now
By Ashley Gorrie CEO. via Path to Purchase Institute
About this Linkedin Group:
We teach and we enable learning about all best practices for marketing along the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intro to Genetic Algorithms
We used Genetic Algorithms (GA) in the enterprise. Have not heard much about them in the press lately, so it was nice to see this presentation online. See previous writing here about the idea and suitable applications at the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Half of US Uses Digital Voice Assistants
Assistants continue to increase their penetration into the home. People are getting used to voice interaction. New statistics about their use and abilities. In TechCo.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Don’t make it appear like you are reading your own recent writes
Richard Statin recently published a Java benchmark where the performance of a loop varies drastically depending on the size of the arrays involved. The loop is simple: for (int i = 0; i < a.length; ++i) { a[i] += s * b[i]; }Continue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Transparent Decision Making
Am a student of the analysis of the process of decision making.
The Downside of Transparent Decision Making In Kellogg Insight ...
Why you’ll get a better recommendation from a committee that deliberates behind closed doors. …
From insideHPC
Intel Deploying Updates for Spectre and Meltdown Exploits
Intel reports that company has developed and is rapidly issuing updates for all types of Intel-based computer systems — including personal computers and servers — that render those systems immune from both exploits (referred
…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Microsoft Research Podcast on How Programming Languages Quietly Run the World with CCC Exec Member Ben Zorn
Contributions to this post were provided by CCC Exec member Ben Zorn. Do you worry that the Bluetooth-enabled smart fork you just got for Christmas is trying to steal your password? Do you wonder what software was used to implement…
From The Eponymous Pickle
DARPA Does Gremlin Swarms
We saw proposals in this space when we examined the use of cooperative swarming in places like warehouses, some time ago. Now Gremlins, small drones, can be dropped from planes and retrieved. Don't think the big idea here…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Nominations Sought for New CCC Council Members
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field. To do so, the CCC needs truly visionary…
From insideHPC
Video: A Closer Look at the Atos Dibona Prototype for ARM-based HPC
In this video from SC17 in Denver, Pascale Bruner from Atos describes the company's innovative ARM-HPC technologies developed as part of the Mont-Blanc Project. "Atos will showcase our Dibona prototype for ARM-based HPC. Named…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Self Awareness
What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)
Tasha Eurich in HBR
Self-awareness seems to have become the latest management buzzword — and for good reason. Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Comparing Standard error vs R Squared
Nicely done simple stat point made in this DSC post ....
Standard Error of the Regression vs. R-squared by Jim Frostin in DSC
The standard error of the regression (S) and R-squared are two key goodness-of-fit measures for regression…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Controlling Ovens
Not unexpected, but another reach into smart home control. Assuming this will require appliance design change rather than after market controls. Note Samsung is mentioned, which implies it will buy into the Alexa commands,
Alexa…