Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
XTRAN for Development
Always interested in the implementation of expertise. Developed a number of them myself. This has been around for some time. Just brought to my attention: XTRAN. " ..... In 1984, we introduced XTRAN, our software development…
From insideHPC
Supermicro World Record STAC-2 Performance with Intel Xeon Phi
Today Supermicro announced World Record STAC-A2 performance. Announced at the STAC Summit, Supemicro beat the record with their SYS-1028GR-TR server supporting dual Intel Xeon Haswell EP processors and dual Intel Xeon Phi 7120P…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Consumer Decision Journey
In McKinsey. Thoughtful piece that looks at revised a map of the journey.The new consumer decision journeyFor years, empowered consumers have held the upper hand when it comes to making purchasing decisions. But companies are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Visualization Mistakes
From Tableau: A video: 100 Years of Data Visualization – It’s Time to Stop Making the Same Mistakes ... " . Best practices for data viz and more. Interesting historical view of data and viz. We are still in a period of wondering…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cloth Simulation
From Disney Research. For consumer generated graphics in movies. Often it is the details that make things look realistic, and the movement of cloth on figures has been a challenge. We examined the general idea to see how such…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
U.S. Web Design Standards Released
The U.S. Digital Service and GSA 18F released new U.S. Web Design Standards to create harmonized user experiences across federal government websites. The effort is part of a larger policy agenda to expand access to government…
From Schneier on Security
$1M Bounty for iPhone Hack
I don't know whether to believe this story. Supposedly the startup Zerodium paid someone $1M for an iOS 9.1 and 9.2b hack. Bekrar and Zerodium, as well as its predecessor VUPEN, have a different business model. They offer higher…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Announces Four Awards to Establish Regional Hubs for Data Science
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced four awards totaling more than $5 million to establish regional hubs for data science innovation. These Big Data Regional Innovation Hub (BD Hubs) awards will create a…
From insideHPC
UberCloud Delivers CAE as a Service with Univa Grid Engine Container Edition
Today the UberCloud announced a complete management and execution environment for UberCloud Application Containers powered by Univa Grid Engine Container Edition. Now, popular commercial and open source technical applications…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson to Upgrade with Deep Learning
This is a fundamental change. The original Jeopardy form of Watson did not use deep learning via neural networks. It was too easy to ascribe too much to it. It is noted that Deep Learning has had considerable success, but…
From insideHPC
Video: HPC Matters at PayPal
In this video from the SC15 HPC Matters series, Ryan Quick, Principal Architect for Advance Technologies at Paypal, talks about how HPC transforms online payment transactions. "IDC estimates that PayPal has saved more than $700…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Do We Still Need Computer Science Teachers?
These days it seems like “how to learn coding yourself” opportunities are everywhere. There are MOOCs from major universities, code.org (http://code.org) has great online tutorials, Facebook just opened a web site called TechPrep…
From Putting People First
Another book entitled “The Quantified Self”
The Quantified Self By Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus MIT Press, 264 pp. April 2016 Oops, that is confusing: two books by sociologists on the quantified self movement, both entitled “The Quantified Self” and both appearing in April…
From Putting People First
Another book entitled “The Quantified Self”
The Quantified Self By Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus MIT Press, 264 pp. April 2016 Oops, that is confusing: two books by sociologists on the quantified self movement, both entitled “The Quantified Self” and both appearing in April…
From insideHPC
Bright Computing to Update Cluster Management Software at SC15
Today Bright Computing announced plans to release several updates and enhancements to its most popular management software solutions at SC15, which takes place November 15-20, 2015, in Austin, Texas. The updates will include …
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Another Perspective on the White House NSCI Workshop
The following is a special contribution to this blog by Doug Burger, Director of Hardware, Devices, and Experiences at Microsoft Research. I served as a panelist at the White House National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop…
From insideHPC
LiquidCool Solutions Launches Newest Technology at SC15
Today LiquidCool Solutions (LCS) announced plans to launch its newest technology - the Clamshell - at SC15 in Austin. As a rack-based server, the Clamshell is low-cost and flexible enough to meet Open Compute Project design standards…
From insideHPC
European Commission Funds Human Brain Project Through 2020
Today the European Commission announced a partnership agreement with the Human Brain Project (HBP), a key EU research project aiming to better understand how the human brain works. "Understanding the human brain is one of the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Ultimate Assistant: Intelligently Answering your Email
In Wired: The ultimate business application of intelligent assistants. Could save time, promote focus, record value, link to business process. But how well will it work? Note that the replies will be very short, at least…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Glasses Translate Video into Sound to Help Blind See
In New Scientist. Am seeing a number of these approaches lately. Repurposing the activity of the brain as a more general purpose sensory understanding engine.Smart glasses translate video into sound to help the blind see Blind…
From insideHPC
GPUs in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Solutions
VDI or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure helps companies save money, time and resources. Instead of large bulky machines on every desk in the office, companies can connect multiple workstations to a single computer using thin clients…
From insideHPC
Ancillary Event Lineup for SC15 in Austin
SC15 in Austin is world’s largest gathering of HPC professionals, and the smart money is on the organizations that leverage the show for their own gatherings, meetups, special booth sessions, and user groups. Here is a roundup…
From Schneier on Security
Australia Is Testing Virtual Passports
Australia is going to be the first country to have virtual passports. Presumably, the passport data will be in the cloud somewhere, and you'll access it with an app or a URL or maybe just the passport number. On the one hand,…
From insideHPC
HiPINEB 2016 in Barcelona Issues Call for Papers
The 2nd IEEE International Workshop on High-Performance Interconnection Networks in the Exascale and Big-Data Era has issued its Call for Papers. The HiPINEB event will take place March 12, 2016 in Barcelona in conjunction with…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Thoughts On Old Software–Why We Need Documentation
A former student sent me a links today - NASA seeks programmer fluent in 60-year-old languages to work on Voyager My first thought was that I know FORTRAN and COBOL but its been decades since I've used them. But of course there…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining
CRISP-DM ( Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) which we plugged into as far back as 07, seems to have disappeared, along with its web site. Data mining also appears to have been folded into the study and methods…
From Computational Complexity
Conference on Computation and Journalism (Part I)
(In honor of Boole's Birthday yesterday see this.) I recently (Oct 2 and 3 2015) went to a conference on Computation and Journalism (see here for their schedule). I went since I co-blog and have a Wikipedia page (here) hence…
From XRDS
Why “Celebrate Women in Computing”?
The ACM-W society is one of the biggest advocates of women in computing. They dedicate several events and awards to celebrate prominent women in computer science and related fields. In September this year, the ACM-W Europe chapter…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of November 2
Tuesday, November 3, 2015 Hearing: TSA Security Gaps House Oversight and Government Reform Committee 10 am | 2154 Rayburn House Office Building Hearing: Examining the EU Safe Harbor Decision and Impacts for Transatlantic Data…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
White House Holds National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop
The White House held a two-day National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop to bring together stakeholders from industry, academia, and federal agencies, laboratories, and research centers to discuss how to grow innovations…