Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2019
From Schneier on Security
Adding a Hardware Backdoor to a Networked Computer
Interesting proof of concept: At the CS3sthlm security conference later this month, security researcher Monta Elkins will show how he created a proof-of-concept version of that hardware hack in his basement. He intends to demonstrate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Credits Used in Silicon Valley?
Interesting claim, but a formal one?
Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system in Fastcompany
In China, scoring citizens’ behavior is official government policy. U.S. companies are increasingly doing…
From Computational Complexity
2019 Fall Jobs Post
Starting PhD students over time would always assume that the computer science academic job market would be a strong or as weak when they graduate as it is when they were starting, and they would always be wrong. That may have…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Hires People with Autism for RPA
I had not heard they were specifically hiring people with autism for RPA and process modeling jobs, is there specific data out there indicating this is a particularly good match? Or it is it a more general diversity effort…
From insideHPC
Nominations Open for James Corones Award Recognizing Science Leadership
Nominations are now open for the James Corones Award, honoring a scientist or engineer who demonstrates integrity and engagement in their field. "The James Corones Award in Leadership, Community Building and Communication recognizes…
From insideHPC
Advancing Progress in Life Sciences
In this special guest feature from Scientific Computing World, Christian Marcazzo, VP and general manager at IDBS highlights trends in life sciences research and development. "As can be seen across most industries, organizations…
From insideHPC
ColdQuanta to Accelerate Commercial Deployment of Quantum Atomic Systems
Today ColdQuanta announced it has been awarded $1M from NASA’s Civilian Commercialization Readiness Pilot Program. The program will enable ColdQuanta to develop significantly smaller cold atom systems with a high level of ruggedness…
From insideHPC
Cortical.io Demonstrates Natural Language Understanding Inspired by Neuroscience
In this video, Cortical.io CEO Francisco Webber demonstrates how the company's software running on Xilinx FPGAs breaks new ground in the field of natural language understanding (NLU). "Cortical.io delivers AI-based Natural Language…
From The Eponymous Pickle
State of Retail Supply Chains
Via Retailwire, the state of the Retail supply chains from Eft. At the link you can sign in and get the full report. Key takeaways below not new or unexpected, have existed for some time, details and solutions.
Eft’s 2020 State…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SQRL for Website Login and Authentication
Happened on Steve Gibson's SQRL, read through a bit of his site, below the WP description. He has a very useful weekly podcast on security called 'Security Now'. That I have followed for several years. A good place to stay…
From insideHPC
Cloud Automation: Five Ways to Contain HPC Cloud Spending
This timely article from our friends over at Univa examines how the cloud is attractive for organizations that need fast access to specialized resources, and that want to avoid the cost and complexity of on-premise infrastructure…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pew Research Data Decoded
Happened into Pew Research of late. Here is their blog/site on data topics, I plan to dive in from time to time and point to things of interest.
The "how" behind the numbers, facts and trends shaping your world.
Pew Research
We…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Course for In-Skill Purchasing
Amazon is crowd sourcing Alexa skills for its infrastructure. Have worked my way through several training outlines like the below. Which show the direction they are moving, worth a look. Still not what I would call very…
From Schneier on Security
Using Machine Learning to Detect IP Hijacking
This is interesting research: In a BGP hijack, a malicious actor convinces nearby networks that the best path to reach a specific IP address is through their network. That's unfortunately not very hard to do, since BGP itself…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Americans Knowledge of Computer Tech
Interesting results. Some odd questions. Could have had more and broader questions. Indicates the challenges for things like understanding topics like privacy and transparency by the general public. Our own work with decision…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Logs are Live and Thriving
A fairly obvious point. Via O'Reilly. But it is precisely these logs initially established for simple statistical, fairly linear tracking, validating the operation of code and resulting UX, that are often used today to drive…
From insideHPC
Agenda Posted for Intel HPC Developer Conference at SC19
Intel has posted the preliminary agenda for the Intel HPC Developer Conference. The event takes place Nov. 17-18 in conjunction with SC19 in Denver. "The keynote for this year's event will be given by Raja Koduri, SVP, Chief
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Data vs Public Data
Short piece in DSC. Useful for my current work. Not sure if the definition is always applied this way, so you have to cautious in using the tag as others apply it.
Is There a Difference Between Open Data and Public Data?
Posted…
From The Noisy Channel
You already see it on Amazon.
You already see it on Amazon. Do a search for “matrix”: not only do you only see Keanu Reeves movie results on the first page, but the left rail focuses on movies (~1,000 results) and beauty & personal care (~2,000 results) in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Learning, Reliability in Complex Systems
Useful piece in Infoq .... learning is hard because we need to continually put it into context for ourselves, goals. Plus the ultimate implications of reliability after they have learned something new.
Jason Hand explores the,…
From insideHPC
Ciena 800G Technology to Power Research at Internet2
Today the Internet2 advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions, has selected the latest photonic and coherent optical innovations from Ciena to transform its network to a more
…
From insideHPC
Excelero And Quanta Cloud Technology Streamline High-Performance Cloud Storage
Today Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT) and Excelero announced QxStor Excelero NVMesh, a High-Performance Cloud Storage joint solution that delivers the high IOPs performance capabilities of NVMe Flash at scale without the traditional…
From insideHPC
Powering Datacenters with Earth’s Molten Core: A Practical Guide
Dan Olds from OrionX.net gave this talk at the UK HPC Conference. "Novel Therm's enhanced Stirling Engine can turn warm water geothermal into megawatts of electricity. This 100% green solution provides a very low PUE (1.03-1.05)…
From insideHPC
GCS Centres HLRS, JSC, and LRZ to Exhibit SC19
Meet the three GCS centres, the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), and Leibniz Supercomputing Centre Garching (LRZ) at SC19 in Denver, Colorado (USA). The international conference…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NELL and Machine Learning
In a re-examination of 'machine learning', the broader definition that includes but is not restricted to deep learning. I recalled our look the CMU effort called NELL, Never Ending Language Learner'. At the time it was insufficiently…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP Rolls Towards Cloud Data Intelligence
Our enterprise was and is an SAP user, we worked with them primarily on optimization analytics applications.
HANA in the Cloud by Christmas, SAP Says, Alex Woodie in DataNami
SAP formally revealed the planned general availability…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Benchmarking is Hard: Processors Learn to Predict Branches
A lot of software is an intricate of branches (if–then clauses). For performance reasons, modern processors predict the results of these branches. In my previous post, I showed how the bulk of your running time could be due to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Asks for Home Access for Delivery
Another case, like the one with Amazon of allowing delivery personnel a means to enter the smart home for delivery. Amazon Key. No idea of how that is working, but have not heard it mentioned recently. We examined the use…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Mispredicted branches can multiply your running times
Modern processors are superscalar, meaning that they can execute many instructions at once. For example, some processors can retire four or six instructions per cycle. Furthermore, many of these processors can initiate instructions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Daydream VR
Somewhat of a surprise given how Google is so emerging tech. But more of a confirmation of a very niche market? Not enough consumer uptake. We saw an early demo and it was impressive.
Google's Daydream VR experiment is…