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 ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Tech Intersections: Women of Colour in Computing, an ACM Celebration
Tech Intersections: Women of Colour in Computing, an ACM Celebration
From Schneier on Security
Mozilla's Guide to Privacy-Aware Christmas Shopping
Mozilla reviews the privacy practices of Internet-connected toys, home accessories, exercise equipment, and more....
From insideHPC
For HPC and Deep Learning, GPUs are here to stay
In this special guest feature from Scientific Computing World, David Yip, HPC and Storage Business Development at OCF, provides his take on the place of GPU technology in HPC. "Using GPUs in the HPC datacenter in place of CPUs…
From insideHPC
GRC Builds GPU-Based Immersion Cluster for TACC
Green Revolution Cooling has announced plans to deliver a custom GPU-based cluster to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Our goal is to make HPC more affordable. Offering lower cost, energy dense servers that take full…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI and Self Driving Cars
In Knowledge@Wharton:
Why AI Is Tipping the Scales in the Development of Self-driving Cars
When people think of self-driving cars, the image that usually comes to mind is a fully autonomous vehicle with no human drivers involved…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
You are your tools
I believe that there are no miracle people. When others get the same work done as you do, only much faster, they are almost surely using better tools. Tools are not always physical objects. In fact, most tools are not physical…
From insideHPC
CoolIT Systems Showcases OEM & Enterprise Data Center Liquid Cooling Solutions at SC17
In this video, Geoff Lyon from CoolIT Systems describes the company's innovative liquid-cooling solutions for HPC. "Liquid cooling in the data center continues to grow in adoption and delivers more compelling ROIs. Our collaboration…
From The Noisy Channel
Thanks. If you’re interested in this area, I suggest you read the series of posts I’ve been writing…
Thanks. If you’re interested in this area, I suggest you read the series of posts I’ve been writing at queryunderstanding.com. Those do include more references, and I’m thinking of expanding on them to write a book.
From insideHPC
New BeeGFS 7.0 Delivers All-Flash Performance at Spinning Disk Price
Last week at SC17, ThinkParQ announced immediate availability of the BeeGFS version 7.0 release candidate. While previous versions of BeeGFS are already running on systems of all kinds and sizes around the globe (including burst…
From insideHPC
Moving HPC Workloads to the Cloud with Avere Systems at SC17
"Traditional methods of moving data are expensive and very time-consuming. These processes often negate the value-add that the cloud offers. Moving all of your data to the cloud is not necessary in order to use cloud compute
…
From insideHPC
InfiniBand Accelerates 77 Percent of New HPC Systems on the TOP500
"InfiniBand being the preferred interconnect for new HPC systems shows the increasing demand for the performance it can deliver. Its place at #1 and #4 are excellent examples of that performance,” said Bill Lee, IBTA Marketing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Virtual Dash Buttons
Amazon continues to redesign how and where you can utilize their Dash Button idea for product order and reorder. The idea came up years ago when we talked the importance of making re-order as easy and transparent as possible…
From insideHPC
Video: Share your know-how with “HPC for the Rest of Us”
"Are you operating a small to medium sized HPC Center? Interested in how others are managing their resources with open source tools and low risk/low overhead hardware? Questions about academic service centers and cost recovery…
From Schneier on Security
Websites Use Session-Replay Scripts to Eavesdrop on Every Keystroke and Mouse Movement
The security researchers at Princeton are posting You may know that most websites have third-party analytics scripts that record which pages you visit and the searches you make. But lately, more and more sites use "session replay"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Multi App Chat Technology
Work by a former colleague.
Skillz Launches World's Largest Multi-App Chat Technology in PRNews:
2,500+ Apps on Skillz Will Now Connect 12 Million Users Through Chat
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Skillz, the worldwide…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Asking Efficient Questions in Conversations
The phrase 'asking efficient questions' struck me in this piece. Is all conversation linked to this concept in some way? And does this example of a simple game show how a chatbot can be designed to reach a goal? We thought…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Why You Should Care About CS Policy
If you’re reading this, it means that you are a dedicated teacher who cares about CS education. You might not think about policy very much, but it can have a big impact in broadening participation in CS in your state. HereContinue…
From Putting People First
Human-centred design in global health: A scoping review of applications and contexts
Human-centred design in global health: A scoping review of applications and contexts By Alessandra N. Bazzano (1), Jane Martin (2), Elaine Hicks (3), Maille Faughnan (1), and Laura Murphy (1) PLoS ONE12(11): e0186744. Published…
From Putting People First
Human-centred design in global health: A scoping review of applications and contexts
Human-centred design in global health: A scoping review of applications and contexts By Alessandra N. Bazzano (1), Jane Martin (2), Elaine Hicks (3), Maille Faughnan (1), and Laura Murphy (1) PLoS ONE12(11): e0186744. Published…
From Putting People First
[Book] Making Cities Smarter
Making Cities Smarter – Designing Interactive Urban Applications by Martin Tomitsch Jovis Publishers March 2018, 208 pages Abstract More than half of the world’s population is now living in cities, and this number is predicted…
From Putting People First
[Book] Making Cities Smarter
Making Cities Smarter – Designing Interactive Urban Applications by Martin Tomitsch Jovis Publishers March 2018, 208 pages Abstract More than half of the world’s population is now living in cities, and this number is predicted…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Do relational databases evolve toward rigidity?
The Hanson law of computing states that: Any software system, including advanced intelligence, is bound to decline over time. It becomes less flexible and more fragile. I have argued at length that Hanson is wrong. My main argument…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
DataScience@NIH Updates
Check out the following updates from Data Science at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Important this week: Big Data Science with the BD2K-LINCS Data Coordination and Integration Center – MOOC on Coursera. November 27,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Embodied Intelligence Trains Robots
Teaching Robots in Virtual Reality.
AI Startup Embodied Intelligence Wants Robots to Learn From Humans in Virtual Reality
By Evan Ackerman In IEEE Spectrum
" ... We are building technology that enables existing robot hardware to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
YouTube Back on Amazon Show
A surprise to me, interesting details in the article. Will be taking a look on our smart home Amazon Show.
YouTube is back on Amazon’s Echo Show
Along with added support for Vimeo and Dailymotion
by Chaim Gartenberg @cgartenberg…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Outer vs Inner Games. Culture and Code
Good thoughts.
The Inner Game: Why Culture Trumps Code in Digital Innovation
Bain Brief By Greg Caimi and Elizabeth Spaulding Excerpt:
" .... While efforts to boost a company's digital competence are widespread, they tend to
In…
From insideHPC
JCAHPC in Japan Wins Inaugural IO500 Award with help from DDN
Today DDN announced that the Oakforest-PACS system JCAHPC in Japan, which uses DDN’s Infinite Memory Engine (IME), has been named the first annual IO500 winner. "The goal of the IO500 is to create a suite of I/O benchmarks that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
No Retirement
Agreed, good thing. Establish working relationships, make changes to what you really want to do and do best. Be ready to adapt quickly. Short piece:
There Is No Retirement--And That's A Good Thing
If you are someone who works…
From insideHPC
Nallatech Showcases Next Generation FPGA Accelerators at SC17
Last week at SC17, Nallatech showcased their FPGA solutions for high-performance computing, low latency network acceleration, and data analytics. "FPGAs are being deployed in volume across a range of on-premise platforms and
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Changing Organizations from Within
True, but key will be how. We had lots of expectations in the previous go around of AI, and understanding how it will most likely first plug in is crucial. We did not do enough of that. Invest, align, build, follow industry…