Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
US Alternative Fueling Stations Visualization
A good interactive data visualization from Tableau. In their public gallery. This would have been useful for a study I did a few years ago on the effects on the supply chain of alternative fuels. This is a good example of…
From Schneier on Security
SecureDrop
SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower support system, originally written by Aaron Swartz and now run by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The first instance of this system was named StrongBox and is being run by the …
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Economics of Advanced Analytics
Shu Schiller, correspondent and Wright State professor, will be giving a talk at the upcoming Teradata conference. Link below for more information about the conference and session. Here is the abstract:1463 - The Economics…
From The Eponymous Pickle
DunnHumby Seeks to Invest in Cincinnati Startups
As they progress with their downtown US Headquarters facility:" ... Look for data analysis firm Dunnhumby’s new seed-stage venture fund to invest in Cincinnati startup companies. Dunnhumby, whose U.S. headquarters are in downtown…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Spreadsheet Day is Today
A correspondent reports that today is spreadsheet day. " ... in honour of the date that VisiCalc was first shipped, way back in 1979. ... " I used to teach Visicalc back around that time, to some very amazed and appreciative…
From Computational Complexity
2013 Fall Jobs Post
Time again for the annual fall jobs post. As always the best places to look for academic CS positions are the job sites at the CRA and the ACM. Also check out the postdoc and other opportunities on the Theory Announcements site…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtualization in CPG, Current and Future
In Progressive Grocer: Good overview of virtualization in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG) industry. Aisles, stores, shoppers and even profit landscapes can be wholly or partially virtualized. Readers of this blog will know…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USPTO Software Partnership Meeting on October 17 at U.C. Berkeley School of Law
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will hold a Software Partnership Meeting tomorrow, October 17, 2013, from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm Pacific Time, at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law. The meeting will provide a forum for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Insurance Companies Love the Quantified Car
As you might expect. All analytical methods, especially those that seek to predict, are by their nature data hungry. Sensors can feed those techniques to lead to better determine what deals to give customers to improve the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Subconscious Mistakes We Make
In Fastcompany: Very often seen in the enterprise. Even from very smart people. The confirmation bias, mentioned first, is a common mistake researchers make. We have filters in our brain that look for many kinds of confirmation…
From Schneier on Security
iPhone Sensor Surveillance
The new iPhone has a motion sensor chip, and that opens up new opportunities for surveillance:
The M7 coprocessors introduce functionality that some may instinctively identify as "creepy." Even Apple’s own description hintsIt…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Hour of Code Launches in San Francisco
Yesterday, Code.Org hosted an event in San Francisco to launch the Hour of Code program first introduced at the 2013 CSTA annual conference and in Myra Deister's blog piece last week. The goal for the Hour of Code is to introduce…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Ships from Inside P&G
Not surprising, this has now been going on for years. Still not enough volume to upset Wal-Mart? " ... Amazon has placed its workers in seven Procter & Gamble (PG) warehouses, where they ship consumer staples such as Pampers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Radical New Teaching Method?
Aspects of AI inspired learning theories. Heavily technology driven. Now further enabled by MOOC. A kind of self organizing approach that assumes that children will organize to teach themselves using either their peers orthe…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Harvesting Contact Lists
A new Snowden document shows that the NSA is harvesting contact lists -- e-mail address books, IM buddy lists, etc. -- from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and others.
Unlike PRISM, this unnamed program collects the data…From The Eponymous Pickle
Shelf Retail Surveillance
In the news today. Word that a major CPG manufacturing conglomerate, Mondelez International, is expressing an interest in using cameras on store shelves to gather data about shoppers. Apparently through image analysis, to determine…
From Schneier on Security
New Secure Smart Phone App
It's hard not to poke fun at this press release for Safeslinger, a new cell phone security app from Carnegie Mellon.
"SafeSlinger provides you with the confidence that the person you are communicating with is actually the person…From The Eponymous Pickle
October Shopper Marketing
Always interesting online Mag. Sign up. Via Steve Frenda" ... The October issue of Shopper Marketing is a cause for celebration for those of us at the Institute. I'd like to offer a hearty toast to Peter Hoyt, the Institute's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tom Malone and the MIT Cognitive Center
We worked with Tom Malone some time ago. He is now director of the MIT Cognitive center. A push forward to AI, long ago started at MIT, that then stalled for a few decades ... now back again? From a talk at IBM:" .. When it'…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
512
This is our 512th post Jim Carrey is an actor known best for his comedic roles, and is considered one of the top movie stars in Hollywood. He starred in the movie The Number 23, which is based on the the 23 enigma: a belief that…
From Putting People First
Experientia redesigns online learning and training toolkit for UN affiliate
This week, the ITC-ILO officially launched the Experientia-designed website Compass: the right direction for learning and training. The site is a toolkit comprising 60 methodologies, with the aim of diffusing learning and training…
From Schneier on Security
Massive MIMO Cryptosystem
New paper: "Physical-Layer Cryptography Through Massive MIMO."
Abstract: We propose the new technique of physical-layer cryptography based on using a massive MIMO channel as a key between the sender and desired receiver, which…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
AP Computer Science or AP Art History
The news came across my social media links that last year more students took the Advanced Placement Art History exam than took the AP Computer Science exam. Given how much better the job prospects are for computer scientistsTo…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Divorcing Your Job
Steve King in his Small Business Labs, points me to this blog by Ayelet Baron about your relationship with your employment. Nicely done view of jobs and our dealing with them. See in particular her story of dealing with a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bring Your Own Devices
In the APQC Blog: Getting prepared for BYOD. A good overview. Gartner predicts that half of organizations will move to a mandatory bring your own device (BYOD) program by 2017. Putting together a strategy, by Mauricio Guerrero…
From Schneier on Security
Insecurities in the Linux /dev/random
New paper: "Security Analysis of Pseudo-Random Number Generators with Input: /dev/random is not Robust, by Yevgeniy Dodis, David Pointcheval, Sylvain Ruhault, Damien Vergnaud, and Daniel Wichs.
Abstract: A pseudo-random number…From The Eponymous Pickle
Glue: Stick Out From the Crowd
Stick out from the Crowd: " ... Glue is a unique tool that enables you to present yourself in a complete, compelling, and informative way. .. " Reexamining this effort which comes from an established firm in the HR evaluation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Decision Support Intuition
In the Decision Support Blog: A new App that aims to make your intuition better. Skeptical of that, but the thought to take decision making beyond the rationally conscious is interesting. " ... London based development company…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data not a Holy Grail
Messy, says an article in Forbes. The dangers to privacy, and the buy-in to magical powers to solve problems. Like any new tool, be cautious about the hype, and use it where it is appropriate.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cloud Prediction and Text
In GigaOM Turing prediction engines towards text. The integration of text and numeric analytcs is rare. " ... Machine learning startup BigML now supports text data in its cloud-based prediction service. It has always analyzed…