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 insideHPC
Supercomputing the Building Blocks of the Universe
In this special guest feature, ORNL profiles researcher Gaute Hagen, who uses the Summit supercomputer to model scientifically interesting atomic nuclei. "A central question he is trying to answer is: what is the size of a nucleus…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Space Weather Implications for Technology
Space weather, and further implications of solar activity can have huge implications for tech on earth. The ability to monitor it will be important. NASA's launch last week of the ICON spacecraft from an aircraft is an example…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Examining Smart City Backlash
A look at how people are reacting to 'smart' and trust, and surveillance and privacy stretching that are parts of smart city plans and implementations. Is it best to see these ideas as primarily cost saving and life improving…
From My Biased Coin
Crimson Editorial on Allston
This was the first Crimson editorial I can recall about the upcoming move computer science will be making to Allston next year.
I'd encourage students (both undergraduate and graduate, but perhaps especially undergraduates -…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Comments on: Echo Auto Gets an Unexpected Ad Stream
Been now using the Auto Echo for several months, this lets you connect with the Echo infrastructure cheaply from most cars. The capability was advertised as providing the same Alexa environment you got at home, including smart…
From insideHPC
HP-CAST Returns to Denver for SC19
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has posted the preliminary agenda for their HP-CAST user group meeting. The event takes place Nov. 15-16 in Denver, right before SC19. "The High Performance Consortium for Advanced Scientific and Technical…
From insideHPC
Video: The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, SKA, and HPC in Australia
Mark Stickells from the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre gave this talk at the HPC User Forum. "The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre is one of two, Tier-1, High Performance Computing facilities in Australia, whose primary function is…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology (October 12th 2019)
In many countries, like Canada, there is relatively little private (business) research. Meanwhile, other research indicates that private research is precisely the kind of research that leads directly to productivity growths.Continue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Consumer Experience and Trust
Probably mostly because trust contains many components. Both long and short term aspects. Both experience and influencer based.
Why is CX Not Impacting Trust?
By Gautam Mahajan
CustomerThink has conducted a study on CX and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Language and AI: Steve Omohundro
Language interaction continues to evolve.
Linghacks Keynote: "Language and AI: Hacking Humanity's greatest invention"
On March 30-31 the wonderful “Linghack” organization supporting computational linguistics held their “Linghacks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Race to Quantum
Useful sort view from Europe on quantum efforts underway. There are very big stakes. Solving the most complex, wicked problems in new ways.
By Katia Moskvitch in Wired UK
Inside the High Stakes Race to Make Quantum Computers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Overviews Accessibility Efforts
Have always though of accessibility as having a goal of augmentation. If its an assistant or simple access adjustment. Good examples here.
Making technology accessible for everyone in the Google Blog
Super G pinata
Written by…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Apple Fixes Squid Emoji
Apple fixed the squid emoji in iOS 13.1: A squid's siphon helps it move, breathe, and discharge waste, so having the siphon in back makes more sense than having it in front. Now, the poor squid emoji will look like it should,…
From Schneier on Security
I Have a New Book: We Have Root
I just published my third collection of essays: We Have Root. This book covers essays from 2013 to 2017. (The first two are Schneier on Security and Carry On.) There is nothing in this book is that is not available for free on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Review of Gary Marcus' Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust
Just reading this book. Found the below non technical overview/review quite useful. Mostly agree with this, and the outline of chapters is useful. Saving it here for my own reference. Buy a copy.
Kenneth Forbus review of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Introduces Sterling Supply Chain Suite
Our earliest work in supply chain, from supplier to plant to consumer, was supported by IBM optimization methods. Recently saw some of their proposals for integrating Watson with supply chain. Also worked with some of IBM's…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Diophantine Obvious Problem}
With a short solution that was hard for me to find. [ Royal Society ] Sir Timothy Gowers is a Fields medalist and fellow blogger. Sometimes he (too) writes about simple topics. Today I would like to talk about a simple problem…
From insideHPC
GigaIO Nominated for Connect’s Most Innovative New Product Awards
Today the San Diego Venture Group (SDVG) announced that GigaIO is a finalist Connect’s Most Innovative New Product Awards. The winning companies will be announced at the Innovation Awards, an event held annually, honoring the…
From insideHPC
Cost-effective Cloud Research Computing comes to Penn State
Penn State’s Institute for CyberScience (ICS) announced that a new cloud computing environment has been added to its suite of high-performance computing offerings. This expanded capability provides Penn State researchers with…
From insideHPC
Podcast: How AI is Helping Astronomers Scour the Skies for Habitable Planets
In this AI Podcast, astronomers Olivier Guyon and Damien Gratadour how they’re using GPU-powered extreme adaptive optics in very large telescopes to image nearby habitable planets. "Imagine staring into the high-beams of an oncoming…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What Time Is 30 Minutes From Now?
Got the proctor guide for the PSAT that I have to proctor next week. There is a chart to help proctors determine stop times that are 25, 35, 50, and 60 minutes from a time after the start time hour.
Wait! What? Someone needsSome…From insideHPC
Zenotech launches Aerospace Cloud Services
Zenotech is launching a new two-year project, Aerospace Cloud Services, to provide technology to enable the UK aerospace sector to add competitiveness to simulation-based design by accessing cloud HPC cost-effectively and securely…
From insideHPC
The Eco-System of AI and How to Use It
Glyn Bowden from HPE gave this talk at the UK HPC Conference. "This presentation walks through HPE's current view on AI applications, where it is driving outcomes and innovation, and where the challenges lay. We look at the eco…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Selling its Marketing Technology
Excerpt from ModernRetail:
Why Kroger’s advertising program remains a nascent opportunity
By Cale Guthrie Weissman
" ..... Kroger — which boasts over 443,000 employees — for the last few years has been trying to improve its digital…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tracking Your Data: Exist
Brought to my attention:
Exist: Track everything together. Understand your behaviour.
By combining data from services you already use, we can help you understand what makes you more happy, productive, and active.
Bring your activity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Future of Malicious Online Activity
Recent events have been troublesome here. We like to trust our machines, but the more autonomous and 'intelligent' they are, leads to lest trust and more complexity. Malware can use autonomy and intelligence as well. Data…
From Schneier on Security
Details on Uzbekistan Government Malware: SandCat
Kaspersky has uncovered an Uzbeki hacking operation, mostly due to incompetence on the part of the government hackers. The group's lax operational security includes using the name of a military group with ties to the SSS to register…
From Universal Acceptance Steering Group
Are the World’s Top Websites Truly Accessible for Global Audiences?
Are the World’s Top Websites Truly Accessible for Global Audiences? An Evaluation of Acceptance of Email Addresses in 2019. By Mark W. Datysgeld, UASG Ambassador and research coordinator for this evaluation The Domain Name Space…
From CERIAS Blog
Near the Root of Cybersecurity Dysfunction
I’ve been missing from the CERIAS blog for much of the last year+ as I enjoyed a long-overdue sabbatical.
While I was away, I was going through some materials in my account and found slides from a talk I was giving many years…From Computational Complexity
William Kruskal's 100th birthday
Today, Oct 10, 2019 is William Kruskal's 100th birthday (he's dead, so no cake. Oh well.) William Kruskal was a great statistician. To honor him we have a guest post by his nephew Clyde Kruskal. We also note that the Kruskalhere…