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
Hospitality Robotics
Clear that robotics will increasingly do labor intensive tasks with robot helpers. Flexibility will be needed. Indoor location and navigation solutions will be needed.
The Relay hotel delivery robot will soon spot Wi-Fi dead…
From Schneier on Security
Student Cracks Inca Knot Code
Interesting....
From Putting People First
Proceedings and videos of EPIC 2017 conference now available
EPIC is the premier international gathering on ethnography in the business world. Its latest edition, EPIC2017, took place in Montreal in October 2017 and had the theme of “Perspectives”: perspectives explores the vantage points…
From Putting People First
Proceedings and videos of EPIC 2017 conference now available
EPIC is the premier international gathering on ethnography in the business world. Its latest edition, EPIC2017, took place in Montreal in October 2017 and had the theme of “Perspectives”: perspectives explores the vantage points…
From Putting People First
[Book] Driverless Cars: On A Road to Nowhere
Driverless Cars: On A Road to Nowhere Christian Wolmar London Publishing Partnership Jan 2018, 136 pages Driverless cars are the future. That is what the tech giants, the auto industry and even the government want us to think…
From Putting People First
[Book] Driverless Cars: On A Road to Nowhere
Driverless Cars: On A Road to Nowhere Christian Wolmar London Publishing Partnership Jan 2018, 136 pages Driverless cars are the future. That is what the tech giants, the auto industry and even the government want us to think…
From Putting People First
Towards multi-dimensional ethnography
In this paper, Julia Katherine Haines, user experience researcher at Google, argues for the value of multi-dimensional ethnography. She explores the potential for ethnography to venture beyond sites, into different dimensions…
From Putting People First
Towards multi-dimensional ethnography
In this paper, Julia Katherine Haines, user experience researcher at Google, argues for the value of multi-dimensional ethnography. She explores the potential for ethnography to venture beyond sites, into different dimensions…
From Putting People First
The business of service: why think tanks need service design
Traditionally the notion of ‘business’ is perceived incongruent with the values of think tanks, writes Melanie Rayment. Those in academia, the third sector, and government policy makers often distinguish themselves in their pursuit…
From Putting People First
The business of service: why think tanks need service design
Traditionally the notion of ‘business’ is perceived incongruent with the values of think tanks, writes Melanie Rayment. Those in academia, the third sector, and government policy makers often distinguish themselves in their pursuit…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kodak and Blockchain to Control Photos
We visited Kodak innovation just before the digital revolution completely flattened and changed the film business. So their history of innovation is interesting to me. Also later worked on the business of monetizing photographs…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Ridiculously fast base64 encoding and decoding
Computers store data as streams of bits. Binary files like image, audio or video files are allowed to contain just about any sequence of bits. However, we also often use text formats; for example, web pages and emails are required…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Windows Insider on Mixed Reality
Been following Microsoft's interest in 'mixed reality' aka augmented reality for a client. Just discovered Microsoft insider podcasts, which looks at near future directions in Windows operating systems, applications and their…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger to Expand Kroger Edge
We studied many kinds if shelf based technologies, below seem to be the outcome of many of these ideas tested. It is mentioned in the article that it was developed with Microsoft technologies like Azure, and that Kroger plans…
From insideHPC
Video: Enabling Medical Device Innovation through Simulation
In this video, ANSYS 3D Physics simulations are used to predict device performance and solve biomedical-engineering challenges compressing design cycles. "With patient welfare hanging in the balance, disruptive innovation is
…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Director of High Performance Computing at Yale
The recently established Yale Center for Research Computing is seeking a Director of High Performance Computing (HPC). This position, under the supervision of the Executive Director of the Yale Center for Research Computing,
…
From insideHPC
Has the Decades-Old Floating Point Error Problem been Solved?
Today a company called Bounded Floating Point announced a breakthrough patent in processor design, which allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit "for the first time in computer history." "This bounded…
From insideHPC
Video: The TOP500 Past, Present, and Future
In this video from SC17, Jack Dongarra, Erich Strohmaier, and Horst Simon give an Invited Talk on the history of the TOP500 list. "The TOP500 list has served as the defining yardstick for supercomputing performance since 1993…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stewart Brand at Speaks Long Now
I was introduced to the Long Now Foundation soon after its inception, and used to mention its efforts often in the predecessor of this blog. Also Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, and The Well, often met with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Roomba Beta Advances
iRobot Launches Beta Program to Test Smarter Home Features for Roombas By Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum
Robots like the 900 series Roomba, which have the ability to make detailed maps of your home while they do chores, are
In…
From Schneier on Security
Article from a Former Chinese PLA General on Cyber Sovereignty
Interesting article by Major General Hao Yeli, Chinese People's Liberation Army (ret.), a senior advisor at the China International Institute for Strategic Society, Vice President of China Institute for Innovation and Development…
From BLOG@CACM
The End of Software Engineering and the Last Methodologist
Let's all do deep learning now.
From BLOG@CACM
Empirical Answers to Important Software Engineering Questions (Part 1 of 2)
Beyond the lamppost
From Computer Science Teachers Association
The Heart of CSTA
As the incoming Executive Director of CSTA I’m thrilled to introduce myself to the greater CSTA community. Instead of vague generalizations and platitudes I’d like to share a story about my first year teaching computer science…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drone Swarms Flying without GPS
Brought up in a recent challenge for Drone Swarms and Drones indoors.
This Autonomous Quadrotor Swarm Doesn't Need GPS By Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum
UPenn's autonomous quadrotor swarm doesn't need GPS or external localization…
From insideHPC
How Integrators Ensure Top Performance for HPC Clusters
In this special guest feature from Scientific Computing World, Robert Roe looks at the role of integrators to deliver and support HPC systems. "There is an increasing propensity for organizations to buy and grow systems, so we…
From insideHPC
Gravitational Waves: The Role of Computing in Opening a New Field of Astronomy
Dr. Joshua L. Willis from the California Institute of Technology and Dan Stanzione from TACC gave this talk at the Intel HPC Developer Conference. "These discoveries mark the beginning of gravitational wave astronomy, and in
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
CES: More Assistants in the Car
CES: Amazon's Alexa Making More Inroads Into Vehicles
David Kiley , Contributor. Providing insights and news about the global auto business.
For all the talk about Google and Apple getting into the auto business, it is tech giant…
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 The Eponymous Pickle
Maersk, IBM Launch Blockchain
Good to think about the value proposition here, how it is beyond a simple ledger database approach. The stated value is to have controlled data sharing among those shippers and other parties that sign up for the service. Back…