Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2016
From The Eponymous Pickle
Khan Academy on Virtual Cameras
An introduction to virtual cameras. How they use them to teach. With influences by Pixar and others. See also, Pixar in a Box.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visual Survey of Data Visualization Tools
Just discovered from From DSC. Nicely done with many things I have not seen.
A Visual directory of 339 tools. Posted by Laetitia Van Cauwenberge
Fantastic resource for anyone trying to communicate insights via visualizations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bots Fighting Online
The Growing Problem of Bots That Fight Online
The way software agents interact on the Web is poorly understood. Now evidence shows that they fight each other for years.
by Emerging Technology from the arXiv September 20, 2016
Software…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Combining Machine Learning and Game Theory
With an unusual application. In the CACM: " ... Technology that integrates machine learning and game theory, called Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security (PAWS), is being tested in Uganda as a way to fight elephant poachers…
From Schneier on Security
Credit Cards with Changing CVVs
There's a new French credit card where the CVV code changes every hour....
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Virtual Reality in Education–Sooner or Later?
There is a lot of excitement about virtual reality and the prospects of it changing education. Everything from Google Cardboard (on the low end of cost and ease of development) to Microsoft Hololens (more augmented reality than…
From Writing
How to create reusable infrastructure with Terraform modules
In Part 1 of the Comprehensive Guide to Terraform series, we explained why we picked Terraform as our IAC tool of choice and not Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, or CloudFormation. In Part 2 of the series, we introduced thehow…
From The Eponymous Pickle
BlockChain for Supply Chain
In CWorld:
" .... A massive DDOS attack and weaknesses in critical systems have put security concerns front and center in the internet of things. IBM thinks a technology best known from the world of
The company is using blockchain…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Assistant and Integrated Device Announcement
Notes on Today's Google Pixel Phone and related announcements. In particular I am interested in how these will work in conjunction with Google's AI developments, and provide assistance to both consumers and the enterprise.
Their…
From Schneier on Security
Is WhatsApp Hacked?
Forbes is reporting that the Israeli cyberweapons arms manufacturer Wintego has a man-in-the-middle exploit against WhatsApp. It's a weird story. I'm not sure how they do it, but something doesn't sound right. Another possibility…
From insideHPC
Video: Sustainable High-Performance Computing through Data Science
Ozalp Babaoglu from the University of Bologna presented this Google Talk. "At exascale, failures and errors will be frequent, with many instances occurring daily. This fact places resilience squarely as another major roadblock…
From Computational Complexity
A Second Order Statement true in (R,+) but not (Q,+)
In my last post I asked
Is there a first order statement true in (R,+) but false in (Q,+)
Is there a second order statement true in (R,+) but false in (Q,+)
First order: No.
One reader said it followed from the Lowenheim…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft on Democratizing AI
More on Microsoft pulling together their AI skills ... A detailed piece. About Democratizing AI? From what I have seen this is more about enterprises using AI than the individual. But interesting thoughts. Cortana is…
From insideHPC
ORNL Creates Programming System for NVM Main Memory Systems
Researchers at the Future Technologies Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a novel programming system that extends C with intuitive, language-level support for programming NVM as persistent, high-performance…
From insideHPC
CSIRO Deploys NVIDIA DGX-1 Deep Learning Supercomputers Down Under
Today NVIDIA announced APAC's first deployment of NVIDIA DGX-1 deep learning supercomputers CSIRO in Australia. "There is a growing interest from research groups to adopt machine learning techniques to support their projects,…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Global City Teams Challenge SuperClusters and Kickoff Event
The Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC), a collaborative platform uniting local governments, nonprofits, academia, and industry working on Internet of Things (IoT) applications within a smart city, has announced the next phase…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New and Noteworthy in IFTTT
New channels and recipes in IFTTT. Construct your own. I continue to follow this way of easily constructing simple logic into streams of data for everyday and business use. For the Smart home or smart business. Remain impressed…
From insideHPC
2016 Intel HPC Developer Conference Addresses In-Demand Topics
Supercomputing developers and experts from around the globe will converge on Salt Lake City, Utah for the 2016 Intel® HPC Developer Conference on November 12-13 – just prior to SC ‘16. Conference attendance is free, however,
…
From Schneier on Security
US and China in Cyberspace
This article on US/China cooperation and competition in cyberspace is an interesting lens through which to examine security policy....
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Infosys Foundation USA/ACM/CSTA Awards for Teaching Excellence in Computer Science
On behalf of CSTA, ACM and the Infosys Foundation USA, I wanted to let you know that applications are now open for the inaugural Infosys Foundation USA/ACM/CSTA Awards for Teaching Excellence in Computer Science. Up to 10 award…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neural Network Zoo
From the Asimov Institute. Reminds me of work we also did with nets, but with far fewer choices of architecture. Our chosen architectures depended only on inputs and outputs, and then we varied levels. It was also rare to have…
From insideHPC
insideHPC Readers: Weigh in on Why AI is Taking Off Now
This may indeed be the year of artificial intelligence, when the technology came into its own for mainstream businesses. "But will other companies understand if AI has value for them? Perhaps a better question is "Why now?" This…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Possibilities for Editing the Blockchain
This really struck me. How? To edit you must be about to syntactically interpret, but the Fortune article explains.
Why Accenture's Plan to 'Edit' the Blockchain Is a Big Deal
by Jeff John Roberts @jeffjohnroberts
Banks will…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google is an Adult!
It has only been 18 years, hard to contemplate, imagine the changes that have occurred in our already then information rich world. Google is 18 and an adult. What can we expect next?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Your Location Data
So where does the data gathered go when you opt in to location tracking? A revealing article in Adage:
Location Tracking and the Trouble With 'Opting In' By Kate Kaye
Anyone who's opened a new app lately has seen a location…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cortana Running Your Office?
Not in its current form, but I can see their direction. Have used both Siri and Echo effectively in this space and these hint at the possibilities. Again I will point to the ability to integrate the acquisition of Linkedin…
From insideHPC
Winning Posters on GPU Programming Send UW Students to SC16
Two University of Wyoming graduate students earned a trip to the SC16 conference in November by virtue of winning the poster contest at the recent Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC) High Performance Computing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Giving Amazon Keys to Your Smart Home
Am a follower of the practicality of the smart home. Here Amazon is trading practicality and security? Our smart home tested alternative delivery systems, like lock boxes. This will have some significant takers, in some…
From The Eponymous Pickle
RetroScope
RetroScope Opens Doors to the Past in Smartphone Investigations
By Purdue University News
August 4, 2016
Researchers at Purdue University are developing a technique that could help law enforcement recover evidence from smartphones…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Costco not going Omnichannel
Long time follower of Costco. Studied how the early use of the Internet in-store influenced their sales. They never paid much attention of omni channel, and this seems to confirm that. Will Amazon erode their bulk purchase…