Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2017
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Clips Gathering, Analyzing Images
Saw Clips introduced this week. An interesting application of an always on, AI driven camera. With shades of Life-Logging, but with better ways to make sense of all the imagery gathered. Creepy, I don't know since we have…
From Schneier on Security
Replacing Social Security Numbers
In the wake of the Equifax break, I've heard calls to replace Social Security numbers. Steve Bellovin explains why this is hard....
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Accepting Nominations for the 2018 Alan T. Waterman Award
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is now accepting nominations for the 2018 Alan T. Waterman Award. This annual award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by the National…
From Computational Complexity
Is the Textbook Market doomed?
STORY ONE:
I always tell my class that its OKAY if they don't have the latest edition of the textbook, and if they can find it a cheap, an earlier edition (often on Amazon, sometimes on e-bay), that's fine. A while back at
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Modeling Economy with Technology
We spent some time working with W Brian Arthur's thoughts about modeling economies and their outcomes at the Santa Fe Institute. Good to take another look.
Where is technology taking the economy? By W. Brian Arthur in McKinsey…
From insideHPC
New Book: OpenACC for Programmers
Sunita Chandrasekaran and Guido Juckeland have published a new book on Programming with OpenACC. "Scientists and technical professionals can use OpenACC to leverage the immense power of modern GPUs without the complexity traditionally…
From insideHPC
Dr. Marius Stan Presents: Uncertainty of Thermodynamic Data – Humans and Machines
Marius Stan from Argonne gave this talk at the 2017 Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing. Famous for his part-time acting role on the Breaking Bad TV show, Marius Stan is a physicist and a chemist interested in…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM-W Networking Award CFP – Extended!
New deadline for our first Networking Award grants for the year! Apply now for funding ($300 max) to support existing ACM-W chapters networking with other chapters … We are extending the deadline for the first round of this academic…
From insideHPC
Internet2 Technology Exchange Meeting Comes to San Francisco Oct. 15-18
Internet2 will host its annual technical meeting, the Technology Exchange, for the research and education community from October 15-18 in San Francisco. The event will convene over 650 attendees from more than 250 institutions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Translation in Your Ear
Saw this demonstrated yesterday. Very impressive. Still not completely automatic, transparent, though that may not be far away. For the omni traveler certainly, but perhaps not yet for technically or contextually difficult…
From insideHPC
Call For Research Papers: ISC 2018
ISC 2018 has issued their Call for Research Papers. "Submissions are now open for the ISC 2018 conference research paper sessions, which aim to provide first-class opportunities for engineers and scientists in academia, industry…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Let there be Better LED Light
The Math That Promises to Make the World Brighter Kevin Hartnett, Senior Writer in Quanta.
The color of LED lights is controlled by a clumsy process. A new mathematical discovery may make it easier for us to get the hues
n…
From insideHPC
Parallel Applications Speed Up Manufacturing Product Development
The product design process has undergone a significant transformation with the availability of supercomputing power at traditional workstation prices. With over 100 threads available to an application in compact 2 socket servers…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
CS Educator Interview: Rebecca Dovi–the update
From The Eponymous Pickle
Identifiying Plant Disease
Out of the fall garden and back to the possibilities of pattern recognition. Back to my alternate botanic tech universe. Penn State work using deep learning to identifying plant disease. Great example:
Phone Powered AI Spots…
From Apophenia
Your Data is Being Manipulated
Excerpt from “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Sergey Brin and Larry Page (April 1998) What follows is the crib from my keynote at the 2017 Strata Data Conference in New York City. Full video can…
From The Eponymous Pickle
3D Printing Human Body Parts
3D-Printing Human Body Parts By Keith Kirkpatrick
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 60 No. 10, Pages 15-17
The advent of three-dimensional (3D) printing is already yielding benefits in many fields by improving the speed and
Indeed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Field Farmed by Drones
A Field Farmed only by Drones
The experience of the Hands Free Hectare team suggests that drone agriculture offers some substantial benefits. ...
Across the United Kingdom, the last of the spring barley has been brought in from…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Millennial Attitudes
Millennials' Attitudes Toward IT Consumerization in the Workplace
By Heiko Gewald, Xuequn Wang, Andy Weeger, Mahesh S. Raisinghani, Gerald Grant, Otavio Sanchez, Siddhi Pittayachawan
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 60 No. 10,…
From insideHPC
SC17 Highlights Nobel Prize Winning LIGO Collaboration
In this video from SC17, researchers discuss the role of HPC in the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of gravitational waves, originally theorized 100 years ago by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity. "We are only…
From The Eponymous Pickle
D-Wave and Quantum Computers
Have followed D-Wave systems for years. Quite a good and detailed piece about what they are doing, their clients and direction.
Is Quantum Computing for Real?
An Intervew with Catherine McGeoch of D-Wave Systems ...
Ubiquity,…
From insideHPC
Clemson to complete $1 million upgrade of Palmetto HPC Cluster
A $1-million upgrade to Clemson University’s Palmetto Cluster is expected to help researchers quicken the pace of scientific discovery and technological innovation in a broad range of fields, from developing new medicines to
…
From The Noisy Channel
Why Voice isn’t Selling…Yet
Originally published in VentureBeat.
Personal digital assistants have taken the world by storm. We have Siri and Google Assistant on our phones, and many of us have Amazon Echo and Google Home, as well. Voice user interfaces,But…From insideHPC
HPC Powers High Pressure Casting Simulation at Shiloh Industries
Hal Gerber from Shiloh Industries gave this talk at the HPC User Forum in Milwaukee. "Shiloh is the global leader in high-integrity, high-vacuum, high-pressure die castings, providing high ductility in aluminum and magnesium.…
From insideHPC
Argonne’s Data Science Program Doubles Down with New Projects
Today Argonne announced that the ALCF Data Science Program (ADSP) has awarded computing time to four new projects, bringing the total number of ADSP projects for 2017-2018 to eight. All four of the program’s inaugural projects…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ubiquity Blog from the ACM
New blog by the ACM.
The digitally connected world has become a large, swirling sea of information stripped of context. We help our readers make sense of it, find meaning in it, learn what to trust, and speculate on our future…
From insideHPC
Fighting the West Nile Virus with HPC & Analytical Ultracentrifugation
Researchers are using new techniques with HPC to learn more about how the West Nile virus replicates inside the brain. "Over several years, Demeler has developed analysis software for experiments performed with analytical ultracentrifuges…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Seeking to Dominate VR
Technology Review reports on Microsoft's view. Again, lets see examples beyond gaming. There is real value here.
Microsoft Is Going All-in on Virtual and Augmented Reality
Hardware partnerships, content, and even plans for social…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Explaining Smart Contracts
Have worked with companies that set simple alarms to warn them of renewal dates and expiration of contracts. This takes it much further. Good simplified view.
What Are Smart Contracts? They Could Help Optimize Your Business …
From Schneier on Security
HP Shared ArcSight Source Code with Russians
Reuters is reporting that HP Enterprise gave the Russians a copy of the ArcSight source code. The article highlights that ArcSight is used by the Pentagon to protect classified networks, but the security risks are much broader…