Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Video Analytics and Privacy
An area we examined in laboratory conditions. One approach seen was the automated blurring of faces. In RetailWire: Discussion: " ... While privacy remains a big concern around in-store video analytics, stores are too much…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Untold History of Women in Science and Technology
A friend sent me a link to an interesting looking page that the White House set up to tell stories of the history of women in Science and Technology. It is a collection of stores about great women in science and technology. For…
From Putting People First
World Development Report 2015 explores “Mind, Society, and Behavior”
WASHINGTON, December 2, 2014 — Development policies based on new insights into how people actually think and make decisions will help governments and civil society achieve development goals more effectively. A richer and more…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cheap Hack-able Roomba
In Mashable: " ... iRobot builds a vacuum-free Roomba for students to hack ... " This is a successor to the iRobot Create, which we used to experiment with simple robotic demonstration ideas. This version has no vacuum, so…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Advisory System
An interesting example."ALEX the virtual benefits counselor is America’s best-selling and most-trusted standalone benefits decision support tool. Used by hundreds of companies (including 50 in the Fortune 500), ALEX helps millions…
From My Biased Coin
Stress: Competition and Ranking
One issue I keep seeing in comments here and elsewhere on this issue is that academia is very competitive, with everyone worried about their rank. In my last post, I admitted that it would be hard to completely deny that there…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Announces New Partnerships for Computer Science Education
The following is a letter to the community from National Science Foundation (NSF) Acting Assistant Director for the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Suzi Iacono. Dear CISE Colleagues, As we…
From Schneier on Security
Understanding Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Matthew Green has a good primer....
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Reminder LiSPI Nominations Close in One Week!
In November, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announced the third offering of the CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Source Projects for Machine Intelligence
In InfoWorld: Four groups have been developing IBM Watson-like systems based on open source work. ... Watson wannabes: 4 open source projects for machine intelligence. These projects aren't as fleshed-out as Watson, but they're…
From Computational Complexity
Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science
(Guest post by Andrew Childs who is now at the Univ of MD at College Park) We have recently launched a new Joint Center for Quantum Information and ComputerScience (QuICS) at the University of Maryland. This center isHartree…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More Advances in Mobile Eye Tracking
An area where we did much work, both on the physical implementation aspects, and on the gathering and analytical methods used with the data. New developments on completely mobile capabilities we did not have just a few years…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Find Critical Business Data Fast
In CWorld: This was part of our mantra in the enterprise with Business Sphere applications. " ... These CIOs are jumping on a fast-moving trend — mining small data sets to deliver valuable insights quickly to the right people…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF US Ignite Deadline Fast Approaching
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) announced in October a new solicitation, entitled US Ignite, that is a big step forward in the US Ignite Administration…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smarter Algorithms
In CWorld: " ... Researchers are working on a new version of an algorithm that will power better search, autonomous cars, smarter smartphones and the Internet of Things. Deep-learning algorithms, which are based on loose simulations…
From Schneier on Security
Over 700 Million People Taking Steps to Avoid NSA Surveillance
There's a new international survey on Internet security and trust, of "23,376 Internet users in 24 countries," including "Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 15 December 2014
This week is the last week of school for my school this calendar year. We start our Christmas break with Saturday the 20th and will be off until January. I’m looking forward to the break. Though of course like many teachers I…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Service Science from Informs
I have been reminded by Jim Spohrer about the importance of services, tasks and the allied sciences to provide what we call intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Now often being called Cognitive Science. I had never before…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning in Python
SciKit-Learn: Was given an arrangement of algorithms in Python awhile back for examination and could have used this. Tutorials, examples and more. " ... Open source, commercially usable - BSD license " . Below their often quoted…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Don't Forget Point of Sale
It is still a very important, vibrant place. Even understood after I spent all of today shopping online. In Marketing Mag. " .... Everyone might going crazy for digital these days but that shouldn’t mean we neglect bricks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simplification of NoSQL Databases
Nice simple introduction with examples. The WP defines " ... A NoSQL (often interpreted as Not Only SQL database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Virtual Agent Who Thinks Like Me
Recently have seen the emergence of mirror style systems, where a system can look like me and I can use that idea to market and advertise. But suppose I had a system that could think like me? Logically (or not) , but also include…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Morphology and Emergence
An area we examined. Has potential application to non quantified but constraint specified problems. problems. For those who are interested in the principle of “emergence” and/or general morphological analysis (GMA), the following…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Chats
Error correction for chatting Bernhard Haeupler is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at CMU. He previously spent a year as a postdoc at Microsoft Research, Silicon Valley, and a year visiting Bob Tarjan at Princeton.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grocery Delivery Options
Have recently been asked to look at grocery delivery capabilities. We saw these as common components of the future home, but they have not developed as quickly as expected. Now here a practical recent comparison. In GigaOM.
From The Eponymous Pickle
What CIO's Need to know about Prediction
Good thoughts about the topic. Not much difference between classic forecasting, analytics, or the use of Big Data. Caution and careful testing in comparison to current approaches in a given business model is always needed.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Linking Multiple Services to Advice
via Jim Spohrer" ... Probably the most interesting related business idea is Adam Cheyer's (co-creator of SIRI) (http://viv.ai) which is trying to what you are describing below - sort of, first for "apps" in a way they get combined…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Gamification Blog
In IEEE Computing Now, a new effort of very broad application. Look forward to following this.Gamification: Inspired by Games Blogby Joann Hoffman and Wanda MeloniTechnology is born of inspiration, of dreaming the impossible…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Storyboard Approach to Big Data Insights
Plan to take a further look at the idea. " ... Big data by itself is just a worthless collection of numbers and characters. To make big data work, you need to show how the information is meaningful. Taking a storytelling approach…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drone Code Project
aIn CWorldThe Dronecode Project will unite thousands of coders to build an aerial operating system for drones ... Drones have just found their new best friends: coders. On Oct. 13, the Linux Foundation unveiled a nonprofit organization…