Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2017
From insideHPC
HPE brings SGI in-memory Technology to Superdome Flex System
Today Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced the HPE Superdome Flex, "the world’s most scalable and modular in-memory computing platform." The platform enables enterprises of any size to process and analyze massive amounts of data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Where AI has Gone Wrong
Most of the examples here are well known. Many of them are less the AI going wrong but how they have been inserted into the underlying business process, sometimes driven by poor expectations. This is not that informative for…
From insideHPC
Video: 25 Years of Supercomputing at Oak Ridge
Since its early days, the OLCF has consistently delivered supercomputers of unprecedented capability to the scientific community on behalf of DOE—contributing to a rapid evolution in scientific computing that has produced a millionfold…
From Computational Complexity
The two fears about technology- one correct, one incorrect
When the luddites smashed loom machines their supporters (including Lord Byron, Ada Lovelaces father) made two arguments in favor of the luddites (I am sure I am simplifying what they said):
These machines are tossing people…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ocado Robots Filling Grocery Orders
With video and detail. Impressive move forward.. Have now watched grocery pick up orders being composed by workers in a standard Kroger store. Not a fast or even very logical process.
How Many Robots Does It Take to Fill…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Announces Innova-2 FPGA-Based Programmable Adapters
Today Mellanox announced the Innova-2 product family of FPGA-based smart network adapters. Innova-2 is the industry leading programmable adapter designed for a wide range of applications, including security, cloud, Big Data,
…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
GHC17 / Teaching Literature with Interactivity
Any time I go to a conference and see the word 'learning' in a session title, I get excited. Even better when games are involved. So I was already positioned to enjoy Elizabeth Hunter's talk on teaching literature with interactivity…
From insideHPC
Advanced Clustering Technologies to build “Pistol Pete” Supercomputer at Oklahoma State
Today Oklahoma State University announced that Advanced Clustering Technologies has been contracted to build and install its newest supercomputer to support a broad range of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)…
From insideHPC
Intel at SC17: To showcase HPC technologies, luminary speakers, and a virtual motorsports experience
This year at SC17, Intel offers many opportunities to learn about the newest technologies, emerging fields like Artificial Intelligence, and the ways organizations are applying those capabilities for real-world applications."
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Images Can be Constructed to Fool Deep Learning
A troublesome result, especially where there is incentive to do so.
Fooling Neural Networks in the Physical World with 3D Adversarial Objects
We’ve developed an approach to generate 3D adversarial objects that reliably fool neural…
From The Noisy Channel
Personalization
In 1964, information science pioneer William Goffman said:
Relevance is defined as a measure of information conveyed by a document relative to a query…[but] the relationship between the document and the query, though necessary…From Schneier on Security
Daphne Caruana Galizia's Murder and the Security of WhatsApp
Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist whose anti-corruption investigations exposed powerful people. She was murdered in October by a car bomb. Galizia used WhatsApp to communicate securely with her sources. Now that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Building Deep Learning Applications
Intriguing piece I am reviewing, showing the continued complexity of the field, from a practice perspective.
Nuts and Bolts of Building Deep Learning Applications: Ng @ NIPS2016 via DSC This article was written by Tomasz Malisiewicz…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cautions About Betting on Platforms
Most of us are today betting on a platform, the Internet, so this seems odd advice. But we are also betting on some specifics of the internet, access, architecture and more. Good cautions.
3 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Bet
The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Looker for Self Service Analytics
Brought to my attention by a client: Looker
Claims for democratized and secure, real time data analytics.
It’s a delicate balance between making data available for people to visualize themselves and being the bottleneck in a never…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bixby Assistant Expanded?
I think that Samsung's Bixby will be important to follow as an assistant. Saw a prototype of this long ago. On a visit to an appliance store recently I saw a Samsung advanced refrigerator that included a sign implying that the…
From insideHPC
Cray Deploys Pair of Supercomputers in Canada for Weather Forecasting
Today Shared Services Canada (SSC) dedicated a pair of Cray supercomputers in Quebec. The new HPC systems will be used by the Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to improve the accuracy and timeliness of weather warnings…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Talks Performance Optimization with RedLine Performance Solutions
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC teams discusses performance optimization with Carolyn Pasti and Don Avart from Red Line Performance Solutions. The company is partnering with Radio Free HPC on Project Cyclops, an effort to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retails and Click and Collect
Include further information and discussion.
Are retailers getting comfy with click & collect? by Nikki Baird in Retailwire.
Through a special arrangement, what follows is a summary of an article from Retail Paradox, RSR Research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Data Function Expanded
IBM expands Watson data platform to help unleash AI for professionals
Provides foundation for secure and intelligent data sharing between business teams across public and private clouds
ARMONK, N.Y., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots need to Dream?
Cognitive Architecture, allowing some reorganization for changing context?
When robots dream: AI systems may learn better and faster if they can ‘sleep’ By Gina Smith in Silicon Angle
As any science fiction fan knows, it’s always…
From insideHPC
High School Team to Compete in SC17 Student Cluster Competition
For the first time, a team high school of high schoolers will compete in the Student Cluster Competition next week at SC17 in Denver. The team hails from Harrison High School in West Lafayette, Indiana. "In this real-time, non…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Senior Systems Software Engineer at Wayne State University
Wayne State University is seeking a Senior Systems Software Engineer in our Job of the Week. "This position will utilize a specialized knowledge of Linux/CentOS to assist with installing, configuring, and troubleshooting software…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Better Building Neuron Models.
Collaboration between Amazon and Microsoft. Is this part of their broader collaboration for assistants we heard about recently?
Gluons for Open AI
AWS, Microsoft Team on ‘Open AI’ by George Leopold
Cloud services rivals Amazon…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shopping Best Buy with Alexa
The rush for voice shopping continues to expand. The capability of the supply chain will likely make the difference. And the penetration of the infrastructure that provides the best voice experience for the type of goods involved…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on the Schedule of Car Autonomy
More information to add to my thoughts about the question of when cars will become autonomous, and the levels of autonomy that are being defined.
How soon will we be driving fully autonomous cars?
Zach Emmanuel in Computerweekly…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Product Recall
Lidl is recalling two of its packaged squid products because of the presence of struvite salt crystals. The danger is unclear. The article says that struvite crystals "may be mistaken as glass fragments," which isn't actually…
From BLOG@CACM
The Birthplace of Artificial Intelligence?
Was the 1951 Paris conference "Les machines à calculer et la pensée humaine" the birthplace of Artificial Intelligence?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technologies for Good and Bad
Just as new machine learning techniques can be used for the good, they can also be used for bad purposes. The below research is been being reported as an example, ways of cracking encryption is another. ...
AI Model Fundamentally…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Messy Creativity
Concept is new to me. Have been using ink stylus ...
How Microsoft embraced 'messy’ creativity with Windows Ink
Microsoft's stylus dreams are finally coming true.
Windows Ink isn't Microsoft's first stab at bringing stylus support…