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
Binge Buying and Clumpiness
I recall looking at measures of 'clumpiness' in market basket analysis. The power of the clump?Are Your Customers ‘Clumpy’? What Binge-buying Means for MarketersIt’s no secret that many consumers now binge-buy online. But new…
From BLOG@CACM
Thoughts on 'The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent' and a Call For Corporate Action
In "The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent" in The New York Review of Books, Andrew Hacker questions if there is really an unfilled need for STEM graduates, and if there are flaws in the American education system that lead us to be…
From The Eponymous Pickle
David Eagleman's: The Brain
Have been watching David Eagleman's six part popular neuroscience program on PBS: The Brain. Very nicely done non-technical and personal overview of recent learnings in neuroscience. A number of his other works are worth…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Bed Sheets
Some nice options....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Managing Very Big Data: Detailed Map of the Milky Way
The results of an experiment to display and navigate a combined observational image of the entire Milky Way Galaxy. 64 billion bits. Description and links to a viewer.
From The Eponymous Pickle
CPG Supply Chains
An element of cost and capability that cannot be ignored. Do you know the processes in play? Architecture should be frequently re-examined. Rising costs, complexities of supply chain are top concern for CPG companies Increased…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digital Transformation
Reasonable thoughts for any analytics as well. Pick a place where you know the process and can support the underlying context.Digital Transformation - Where do you start?by Pearl ZhuStart with the process or capability thatOrganizations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Consumer Behavior
In the WSJ: Outline of a forthcoming paper. To which I respond, anyone can predict, but how well and in what context? " .... “Once we understand the factors affecting consumer behavior, we are then able to predict it,” the…
From insideHPC
Video: Python for High Performance Computing
In this video from the recent Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing, William Scullin from Argonne National Labs presents: Python for High Performance Computing.
The post Video: Python for High Performance Computing…From insideHPC
Hartree Centre to Assist Industry with OpenPOWER Acceleration
Today the Hartree Centre announced plans for the UK's first POWER Acceleration and Design Center (PADC) designed to help UK businesses exploit high performance computing on OpenPOWER systems for Modeling & Simulation and Big …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autonomy of Driverless Cars
In CWorld: At what point should cars be completely driverless? The direction, certainly for delivery, seems to be fast approaching. Some thoughts." .... If the problems that robotics encounters in extreme environments are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Skip: More In Aisle Checkout
One of the holy grails of retail is to much decrease or even eliminate the checkout experience . It would cut labor needs, and also eliminate one of the most common complaints of shoppers, the long checkout line. We examined…
From insideHPC
Leo Reiter from Nimbix on the Keys to HPC Startup Innovation
Nimbix CTO Leo Reiter will present a featured Founder Story at the StartupHPC Summit, Monday Nov 16 at the Capital Factory in Austin. We sat down with him to get his perspectives on the challenges, risks, and rewards of startups…
From Putting People First
IKEA Play Report 2015
IKEA has undertaken a major research-driven project in 2014 across 12 countries (report here) to explore the subjects of children’s development and play, and young people and parents’ perception of family life at home. This is…
From insideHPC
Cloud Computing Models for HPC
This article describes the challenges that users face and the solutions available to make running cloud based HPC applications a reality. You'll learn about different cloud computing models, potential economic savings and factors…
From Schneier on Security
Forensic Analysis of Smart Card Fraud
This paper describes what is almost certainly the most sophisticated chip-and-pin credit card fraud to date. News article. BoingBoing post....
From Putting People First
White paper: Design for aging
Designing the Second Half of Life: Innovation for Aging A visual white paper by Karten Design September 2015 The next 30 years will be a defining era for the American healthcare system, as the number of adults aged 65 and older…
From Putting People First
Imagining a future IKEA catalogue [design fiction]
On August 31st Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova from the Near Future Laboratory organised a full day design fiction workshop in Sweden focused on the consumer-oriented Internet of Things. The goal for the day was to create a …
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Would You Like a Hint?
Students ask me why their program doesn’t work all the time. Sometimes they ask me as soon as a problem pops up. Usually they work on it themselves for a while. They also ask their peers for help. But sooner or later a lot of…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Faster hashing without effort
Modern software spends much time hashing objects. There are many fancy hash functions that are super fast. However, without getting fancy, we can easily double the speed of commonly used hash functions. Java conveniently provides…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visualizing Shopping Trends Across the US
In Shopping with Google: (Beta shopping trend visualization)Shopping Insights: Explore How People Shop for Products Across the U.S.In today's connected world, 87% of shopping research happens online, yet 92% of goods are still…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Intel HPC Developer Conference Coming to Austin for SC15
In this podcast, Intel Software Evangelist James Reinders describes the upcoming Intel HPC Developer Conference. Featuring a keynote by Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee, the event takes place Nov. 14-15 in Austin…
From insideHPC
Accelerated Science: GPU Cluster Case Study
A successful example of how a well-managed GPU cluster allowed scientist to focus on obtaining results comes from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) results. A research group lead by Dr. Akinori Yamanaka…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Informs Analytics E-News
The Informs e-News: From The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science. Lots of practical news and information for the analytics practitioner.
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Fitbit
This is impressive: "An attacker sends an infected packet to a fitness tracker nearby at bluetooth distance then the rest of the attack occurs by itself, without any special need for the attacker being near," Apvrille says. "…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Quantum Computing Within a Decade
Predicts Microsoft. In the CACM. Most interesting part: " ... The Microsoft team maintains a "hybrid quantum-classical" algorithm needs to be utilized in order to incorporate the power of a small quantum computer into a…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop
The White House just wrapped up their National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop (NSCI). The purpose of the workshop was to maximize the impact and inform long term planning for the NSCI, by creating new partnerships between…
From insideHPC
Asetek Enters OEM Purchase Agreement with Penguin Computing
Today Asetek announced an OEM purchase agreement with HPC vendor Penguin Computing. As a part of the agreement, Penguin will incorporate Asetek’s RackCDU D2C liquid cooling technology into its Tundra Extreme Scale (ES) HPC server…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Rankings Versus Ratings
Handling both with the amazing generalized Kendall tau distance source Michelle Kwan was one of the last great figure skaters to compete under the historic “6.0” ranking system. She won the world championship five times under…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Rankings Versus Ratings
Handling both with the amazing generalized Kendall tau distance source Michelle Kwan was one of the last great figure skaters to compete under the historic “6.0” ranking system. She won the world championship five times under…