Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP Does Analytics Cloud
It seems to be the week for new analytics offerings. A Software as a Service offering. Implications of some embedded intelligence, which makes sense since SAP has always delivered some domain tailored capabilitiesSAP launches…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
On the memory usage of maps in Java
Though we have plenty of memory in our computers, there are still cases where you want to minimize memory usage if only to avoid expensive cache faults. To compare the memory usage of various standard map data structures, I wrote…
From insideHPC
Register for SC15 by Oct 15 and Save Big
Are you planning on attending SC15 in Austin? Discounted "Early Bird" Advance registration for the SC15 conference ends Thursday, Oct. 15. After that, fees go up and could add several hundred dollars to your costs.
The post Register…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Creating Games in ScratchJr without Variables
Written by Aung Nay & Aye Thuzar ScratchJr is a popular graphical programming language that allows children from age five to seven to create “interactive and animated scenes and stories” [1]. It addresses the lack of programming…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Deception in a Data Driven World
Lots in the news recently about storytelling with data. Which led me to memories of stories that did not match the actual reality of the data. So a good story is not necessarily good science. Confirmation bias in storytelling…
From Schneier on Security
On Cyber Arms Control Treaties
Good op-ed....
From insideHPC
Comedian Jason Alexander to Perform at Mellanox Event at SC15
Today Mellanox announced the speaker lineup for their annual Dinner Event at SC15 will include comedian Jason Alexander from Seinfeld. Special guests include: Marek Michalewicz from A*STAR, Thomas Lippert from Jülich, and Jack…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Analytics Free Edition
Register here to get access to the free edition of Watson Analytics.#analyticsforall
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thinking an Architecture of Advice
Working thoughts: There should be a compendium of 'Questions to ask first'! For all sorts of contexts. Is it the same as an FAQ? Not exactly. But is it enough different? In the enterprise when we did AI, we developed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digital Shopping
Is digital grocery shopping hitting critical mass? Nearly half of global consumers surveyed by Nielsen say they are ready and willing to grocery shop online, and Web-based grocery sales are on track to hit $13 billion this year…
From insideHPC
Researching Origins of the Universe at the Stephen Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology
In this special guest feature, Linda Barney writes that researchers at the University of Cambridge are using an Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor-based supercomputer from SGI to accelerate discovery efforts. “We have managed to modernize…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuromorphic Chips
In Wired: 48 million neurons mimic the brain of a small rodent. Increasingly we are looking at how to directly model the biological. Is it better to mimic biological systems or to directly model them? Also in Linkedin.
From Blog@Ubiquity
What Can Paragons of Literature Teach Us about Writing Better Computer Programs?
While grappling with mechanics of writing, we all too often lose sight of another important insight into effective communication.
The post What Can Paragons of Literature Teach Us about Writing Better Computer Programs? appeared…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop
The White House National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop will be held next week in McLean, Virginia at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner. The workshop will take place from Tuesday, October 20, 2015, at 8:45 A.M. – 5:30…
From insideHPC
James Reinders Presents: Vectorization (SIMD) and Scaling (TBB and OpenMP)
James Reinders from Intel presented this talk at the Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing. "We need to embrace explicit vectorization in our programming. But, generally use parallelism first (tasks, threads, MPI…
From My Biased Coin
Yes, We're Hiring This Year
Harvard's CS search ad is apparently up and out. We're eagerly awaiting applications....https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/6497The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciencesseeks applicants…
From Schneier on Security
Obama Administration Not Pursuing a Backdoor to Commercial Encryption
The Obama Administration is not pursuing a law that would force computer and communications manufacturers to add backdoors to their products for law enforcement. Sensibly, they concluded that criminals, terrorists, and foreign…
From insideHPC
Heterogeneous On-Demand Storage for HPC Workflows in the Cloud
Leo Reiter from Nimbix presented this talk at the HPC User Forum. "Unlike conventional commodity cloud platforms, JARVICE and the Nimbix Cloud are purpose built to run any processing job at speed and scale. It means that as your…
From insideHPC
Agencies, Universities Announce Recipients of Inaugural Program to Expand Role of Women in Leading-Edge Networks
Five up-and-coming networking experts have been selected to take part in the Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) program. The women, all early- to mid-career networking and computer professionals, will receive full travel support…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Just Don’t Turn Them Off
A couple of years ago two of my students were discussing my influence on motivating students into computer science. One was giving me much too much credit. The other was being more realistic but did say that I encouraged him …
From updated sporadically at best
Work is (Not) a Four Letter Word
I recently finished reading Mindy Kaling’s Why Not Me? What I found most empowering was her openness about hard work.In the book, Mindy Kaling is refreshingly honest about being a “workaholic.” In the Glamour excerpt of the book…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Launches IOT Platform Beta
Am a subscriber to AWS, will examine. In Infoq:' .... At Amazon’s recent re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas, the company announced a new Internet of Things (IoT) platform called AWS IoT. This platform is currently…
From CERIAS Blog
Privacy, Surveillance, Freedom of Expression, and Purdue University
On September 24 and 25 of this year, Purdue University hosted the second Dawn or Doom symposium. The event — a follow-up to the similarly-named event held last year — was focused on talks, movie, presentations, and more related…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Where are all the search trees?
After arrays and linked lists, one of the first data structures computer-science students learn is the search tree. It usually starts with the binary search tree, and then students move on to B-trees for greater scalability.Continue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Analytics Livestream Tomorrow
Tomorrow, major announcements on Watson Analytics, A move towards automating data science. Examples in a number of domains. I am attending as an invited analyst." ... Analytics for All: Empowering Everyone to KnowAn IBM livestream…
From insideHPC
Asetek Continues Momentum with Largest Server Installation Order to Date
Today Asetek announced its biggest purchase order to date for its RackCDU data center liquid cooling system. The order was placed by an undisclosed Original Equipment Manufacturing partner. The order for 21 RackCDU with Direct…
From insideHPC
Kathy Yelick to Receive Ken Kennedy Award at SC15
Today ACM and IEEE announced that Kathy Yelick from LBNL will be the recipient of the 2015 ACM/IEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award for innovative research contributions to parallel computing languages that have been used …
From Schneier on Security
Jamming Wi-Fi
It's both easy and cheap. Slashdot thread....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Scientists Telling Stories
I partially agree. But there is an implication that they are telling the story they want you to get from the data. I have seen a number of examples where the 'data scientist' is less than objective. I want the story that the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Improved Ad Measurement
Measurement is my favorite topic. If you can't do it well, any amount of analytics or 'Bigger' data will not help. In Adage: Content Budgets Rise as Measurement Advances ... Nearly Half of Marketers Are Spending 20% More…