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 Schneier on Security
Hardware Bit-Flipping Attacks in Practice
A year and a half ago, I wrote about hardware bit-flipping attacks, which were then largely theoretical. Now, they can be used to root Android phones: The breakthrough has the potential to make millions of Android phones vulnerable…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Fiber Pauses
Many think they have stopped this moonshot, and they say that in their official blog in a rather round about way. Was harder than they thought. In the Google Fiber Blog.
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Do We Enhance Human Intelligence?
Where is Human Intelligence (HI) going with augmentation? Been trying for a long time, still quite a way to go. 'Starting to identify', is a good embedded phrase. Lots of work still to do.
Bryan Johnson
Founder @KernelCo
Kernel…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Supershoppers
Google takes a look at the characteristics of supershoppers, with interesting statistics.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Madefire Telling Stories
Brought to my attention at the recent Microsoft announcements regarding 3D image delivery.
Madefire
A New Storytelling Era
Experience Stories
Madefire is undertaking an epic journey
One that we believe will revolutionize how stories…
From insideHPC
SGI UV Powers Romanian Aerospace Agency
The National Institute of Aerospace Research in Romania will power its scientific and aeronautical research program with a new SGI UV system. "This is the second SGI system we have installed at INCAS,” said Costea Emil, head
…
From insideHPC
Will Deep Learning Scale to Supercomputers?
Are supercomputers practical for Deep Learning applications? Over at the Allinea Blog, Mark O'Connor writes that a recent experiment with machine learning optimization on the Archer supercomputer shows that relatively simple
…
From insideHPC
New AVX-512 Instructions Boost Performance on Intel Xeon Phi
While there have been previous generations of AVX instructions, the AVX-512 instructions can significantly assist the performance of HPC applications. "The new AVX-512 instructions have been designed with developers in mind.
…
From insideHPC
OpenPOWER Gains Momentum in Europe
Growing momentum was the watchword at the inaugural OpenPOWER European Summit this week, where the OpenPOWER Foundation made a series of announcements today detailing the rapid growth, adoption and support of OpenPOWER across…
From insideHPC
It’s Here: The Print ‘n Fly Guide to SC16 in Salt Lake City
At insideHPC, are very pleased to publish the Print ‘n Fly Guide to SC16 in Salt Lake City. We designed this Guide to be an in-flight magazine custom tailored for your journey to SC16 — the world’s largest gathering of high performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Supply Chain at McCormick
On supply chain and planning at McCormick. Not an uncommon approach. More in the article:
In Consumergoods:
" ... Fast-forward to today, and ensuring McCormick’s products are available when and where consumers expect them has…
From Computational Complexity
Get Ready
My daughters, now in college, never knew a time when they couldn't communicate with anyone instantaneously. Molly, now 18, takes pride having the same birth year as Google. They have never in their memory seen a true technological…
From Schneier on Security
How Powell's and Podesta's E-mail Accounts Were Hacked
It was a phishing attack....
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Why is learning Binary hard?
Why is learning Binary (and various number bases) so hard for students? I don't remember how exactly there were taught to me except that it was in either the 5th or 6th grade and that I took to it like a duck takes to water.Maybe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smarter Health Devices
An example of how predictive weather data might be used to make devices smarter.
IBM Is Using Weather Data To Help Predict Asthma Attacks
IBM is entering into the race to develop "smart" inhalers and software systems for asthma…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hidden Treasures of Procurement
Was involved in procurement at a number of different levels in the enterprise. This Bain & Co article on the topic. It is a gold mine of possibilities. A good place to first think about analytical methods. Lots of solutions…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIH 2 New BRAIN Requests for Applications
The National Institute of Health (NIH) just announced 2 new BRAIN Initiative Requests for Applications (RFAs). The applications are not just limited to neuroscientists, they are open to anyone addressing the goals of President…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Conversation with David Bunnell
A visionary of the personal computer. I remember reading of his work long ago.
David Bunnell (1947-2016): A Remembrance
PC MEMORIES, HOW I CREATED THE PC
A Conversation with David Bunnell [3.13.00]
My epiphany came while I was looking…
From Schneier on Security
OPM Attack
Good long article on the 2015 attack against the US Office of Personnel Management....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Judea Pearl on Engines of Evidence
A favorite researcher on the topic. How do we understand how evidence models results? In the Edge:
Engines of Evidence, A Conversation With Judea Pearl
A new thinking came about in the early '80s when we changed from rule-based…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Staples Tests Echo Competitor
Seems like an unexpected direction, but is not. Also I like the fact that this could open interactions to the workplace. 'Easy Button', though no longer in their ads, states the premise. Increases engagement.
Staples develops…
From insideHPC
NSF Sponsors Women Engineers for SCinet Buildout for SC16
The Networking at SC (WINS) program officially launched today. Funded through a grant from the NSF and EsNet, the program sponsors eight career women in the research and education network community to participate in the build…
From insideHPC
Penguin Computing Adds Pascal GPUs to Open Compute Tundra Systems
Today Penguin Computing announced availability of Open Compute-based Tundra Relion X1904GT and Tundra Relion 1930g servers, powered by NVIDIA Tesla P40 and P4 GPU accelerators, respectively, for deep learning training and inference…
From insideHPC
Video: Jim Ganthier on how Dell EMC Powers HPC & Big Data
"HPC is 'mainstreaming' into many industry verticals and converging with Big Data and Cloud. By 2019, HPC will account for nearly 1 in 4 of all servers sold. Our scalable, flexible market-ready solutions — with the latest Intel…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Shipping ConnectX-5 Adapter
"We are pleased to start shipping the ConnectX-5, the industry’s most advanced network adapter, to our key partners and customers, allowing them to leverage our smart network architecture to overcome performance limitations and…
From insideHPC
BSC Collaborates with OpenFog Consortium
"To reinforce and continue with our pioneering work on fog computing that started in 2008, we pursue synergies between leading technology companies and academic and scientific community," said Mario Nemirovsky, Network Processors…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computers as Furniture
Interesting suggestion, that we are not all that interested in the evolving capabilities of computing. Its furniture, we need it, but the details are unimportant. So the announcements being made in the fall are less closely…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Robots for Teaching are everywhere–Which should I use and how?
Do a search for “robots for teaching programming” using your favorite search engine sometime. You’ll find a lot of news about the latest and greatest robot for educational use. They are all “new” and “innovative” and designed…
From Schneier on Security
Malicious AI
It's not hard to imagine the criminal possibilities of automation, autonomy, and artificial intelligence. But the imaginings are becoming mainstream -- and the future isn't too far off. Along similar lines, computers are able…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Automating Big Data Analysis
Automating big-data analysis
With new algorithms, data scientists could accomplish in days what has traditionally taken months.
Larry Hardesty | MIT News Office
Last year, MIT researchers presented a system that automated a crucial…