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 insideHPC
ISC 2018 Issues Call For Tutorials and Workshops
ISC 2018 has issued their Call for Tutorials and Workshops. The conference takes place June 24-28 in Frankfurt, Germany. "If you possess knowledge and skills in a particular field in high performance computing, and enjoy sharing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seeking Voice Assistants in the Workplace
Now been involved in a number of brainstorm meetings addressing now virtual assistants can be used in the workplace. Especially how voice can be used without disrupting a typical workplace. Makes sense to use these for mundane…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Earthquakes in the Age of Exascale
Over at LLNL, Linda Vu writes that tomorrow's exascale supercomputers, will enable researchers to accurately simulate the ground motions of regional earthquakes quickly and in unprecedented detail. "Ultimately, we’d like to get…
From The Noisy Channel
To Build Better Search, Develop Empathy With Your Users
User experience designers recognize the importance of empathy in the design process. Understanding how and why users engage with products yields insights that help UX designers evaluate and improve those products.
But empathyAnd…From insideHPC
Intel FPGAs Power Acceleration-as-a-Service for Alibaba Cloud
Intel field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are now powering the Acceleration-as-a-Service of Alibaba Cloud. The acceleration service, which can be launched from the Alibaba Cloud website, enables customers to develop and deploy…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at how How Blockchain Could Prevent Fake News
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Henry Newman’s recent proposal to use Blockchain as a way to combat Fake News. Henry shares that this rant result from what he saw as an egregious story that was going around
…
From Schneier on Security
New KRACK Attack Against Wi-Fi Encryption
Mathy Vanhoef has just published a devastating attack against WPA2, the 14-year-old encryption protocol used by pretty much all wi-fi systems. Its an interesting attack, where the attacker forces the protocol to reuse a key.…
From insideHPC
Simplifying HPC Software Stack Management
While most of the fundamental HPC system software building blocks are now open source, dealing with the sheer number of components and their inherently complex interdependencies has created a barrier to adoption of HPC for many…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Next Gen Personalization
Good piece shows the breadth of tech being used to personalize.
Shop.org Takeaway: Three steps to next-gen personalization
By Deena M.Amato-McCoy in ChainStorage.
Consumers are becoming more digitally influenced on a seemingly
To…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brain Machine Interface
The idea has been around for years, now approaching reality. In Wired:
" .... 2017 has been a coming-out year for the Brain-Machine Interface (BMI), a technology that attempts to channel the mysterious contents of the two-and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blockchain and the Energy Grid
How Blockchain Could Give Us a Smarter Energy Grid
Energy experts believe that blockchain technology can solve a maze of red tape and data management problems. .... "
by Mike Orcutt in Technology Review
From The Eponymous Pickle
Time Measurement Productivity Tools
Had not heard of many of these tools. Rarely is time measured this carefully.
8 Productivity Tools Illustrate You Have Way More Time Than You Think
The scarcity of time is an illusion that most entrepreneurs struggle to overcome…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ad Tech Emerging for Tactical Decisions
When I first joined the enterprise we constructed some near autonomous systems to analyze, select and insert ads optimally. If anything today, we have much better data to drive such systems. Is this the near future? Where…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Russian Voice Assistant
Russian Voice Assistant Alice Sounds as Natural as Developer Yandex Claims By Brenda Stolyar in Digital Trend
It’s sometimes tough to remember the days when we didn’t have the convenience of a voice assistant. Whether it’s through…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Creative Promotion Machine
Just now examining the creative personalization angle addressed here. A mix of personalization and creativity. But how much?
AI-Based Promotions – Welcome to the Creative Machine By Vince Jeffs
As a Marketer, when you craft…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Listening to Your Patients
Could virtual assistants act as a means to start efficient dialog with patients? Consider the patient interaction to be three-way. An assistant starts the interaction, to establish basic facts, fears, directions. Suggests…
From insideHPC
Video: NASA Advanced Computing Environment for Science & Engineering
Rupak Biswas from NASA gave this talk at the Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing. "High performance computing is now integral to NASA’s portfolio of missions to pioneer the future of space exploration, accelerate…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Scientific Computing Senior Engineer at NREL in Colorado
NREL in Golden, Colorado is seeking a Scientific Computing Senior Engineer in our Job of the Week. "We have an immediate opening for a Systems Engineer (Job Req #R2314). This senior position is responsible for implementing and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cautions About Using this Blog
Because of the nature of a blog, and the way it presents information serially, please be careful to read the publication date of information. It may render information invalid. Also note that I cannot guarantee that links…
From insideHPC
SciDAC funding to Move Quantum Chromodynamics forward at Jefferson Lab
As nuclear physicists delve ever deeper into the heart of matter, they require the tools to reveal the next layer of nature's secrets. Nowhere is that more true than in computational nuclear physics. A new research effort led…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Infrastructure Automation
Basic Infrastructure Automation is a No-Brainer – Why Aren’t You Doing It? Chris Gardner, Senior Analyst Forrester
Everyone knows they need to automate. That is not a thought-provoking statement. In fact, when we ask infrastructure…
From insideHPC
John Gustafson to host BoF on Posit Arithmetic at SC17
John Gustafson from A*STAR will host a BoF on Posit arithmetic at SC17. Entitled, "Improving Numerical Computation with Practical Tools and Novel Computer Arithmetic," this BOF will be co-hosted by Mike Lam with discussions
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fake Data
My colleague Kaiser Fung talks fake data. Good thoughts and pointers to examples and resources. Read his whole article at the link.
Here is a problem staring many digital/Web/social media analysts in the face today: what if you…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ahold Digital Strategy
Considerable detail in this Progressive Grocer piece.
Ahold's digital strategy pays off
Ahold USA has seen success with a new digital strategy that has brought on 1 million new digital users, increased monthly app usage by 76%
…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: International Squid Awareness Day
It's International Cephalopod Awareness Days this week, and Tuesday was Squid Day. I can't believe I missed it. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
GHC17 / Changing of the Guard: Welcome to the New ABI President and CEO
At the opening keynote of this year's Grace Hopper Celebration, eighteen thousand technical women got to meet AnitaB.org's new President and CEO, Brenda Darden Wilkerson. She introduced herself as a warm, eloquent, and passionate…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM-W Connections – October 2017
Letter from ACM-W chair. News from Celebrations Scholarship awardees of October Welcome from the ACM-W Chair The Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL was the site of this year;s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Capturing the Value of APIs
Good general discussion of the architecture. Good choices can make API possible and an asset. In McKinsey.
What it really takes to capture the value of APIs
By Keerthi Iyengar, Somesh Khanna, Srinivas Ramadath, and Daniel Stephens…
From Schneier on Security
My Blogging
Blog regulars will notice that I haven't been posting as much lately as I have in the past. There are two reasons. One, it feels harder to find things to write about. So often it's the same stories over and over. I don't like…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Virus Structures at Nanoscale with XFEL
A team at Berkeley Lab are using innovative computational methods to enable new X-ray science. "The creation of XFEL facilities, including the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) and the European X-FEL, have created opportunities…