Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2015
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
ACM Sponsors Congressional Briefing on STEM Education and Public-Private Partnerships
The ACM Education Policy Committee joined the National Science Teachers Association, the American Chemical Society, the Afterschool Alliance, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Education Development Center…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Loyalty Rewards Discounts Work better Online
More studies on loyalty in retail. Also good comments. Read the article details." ... With consumers typically not needing the incentive of a coupon to return to their favorite physical store, discounts from loyalty rewardInternet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Internet of Things and AI
In the CACM: A look at how AI should connect with the Internet of things. " .... Oblong Industries CEO John Underkoffler does not believe a connection between the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) will…
From Schneier on Security
Back Door in Juniper Firewalls
Juniper has warned about a malicious back door in their firewalls that automatically decrypts VPN traffic. It's been there for years. Hopefully details are forthcoming, but the folks at Hacker News have pointed to this page about…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 21 December 2015
Yea! I’m on Christmas Break. Most of the public schools in my area start their winter break after Wednesday. I’ll be spending some of my free time getting ready for the spring semester. All my classes this year are single semester…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Trip Type Classification
From DSG: Nice example of how data science can be used for a real world classification problem, with real data. Including 1.2 million observations with 6 features. Here using a Random Forest method for classification of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
China Customer Data Opens Potential
Remember looking for just this kind of detail data just a few years ago to model the Chinese Consumer in more detail. Quite a potential here. This is big enough and detailed enough to drive some real value.Chinese Internet Giant…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smarter Toys as Virtual Assistants
A kind of extension to the virtual assistant idea. Toys that can engage, inform, aid, teach. It is already here with advisors like Cortana, Alexa and Siri on a phone or tablet. But is a toy a different kind of channel that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data as a Trillion Dollar Asset
A favorite topic. It is not only about the data, but how the data can be combined with other data in given contexts. It need not be 'big' in any sense, but valuable in context. A year ago spent some time looking at methods…
From insideHPC
Video: Blazegraph Accelerates Graph Computing with GPUs
“Analytics applied over complex, many-to-many data relationships hit the ‘Graph Cache Thrash’ bottleneck and grind to a halt, failing to deliver good performance or to operate at scale,” said Brad Bebee, SYSTAP CEO. “GPU hardware…
From Wild WebMink
Winter Music
If you’d like some music for the dark nights (& days) that’s not so “traditional”, try these albums: Strange Communion by Thea Gilmore (previously covered) Wild Winter by Smoke Fairies One Quiet Night by Pat Metheny Light & Gold…
From insideHPC
Oracle Acquires StackEngine Startup to Automate Docker
On December 18, Oracle closed an agreement to acquire StackEngine, an Austin-based startup focused on Docker automation. All StackEngine employees will be joining Oracle as part of Oracle Public Cloud.
The post Oracle Acquires…From The Eponymous Pickle
Glucose Tracking Device
An example of new health sensor development by Google and Dexcom. Disposable device to track glucose levels.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stanford Winter Crowd Research Program
Via ACM. Register until the end of December.Stanford Crowd Research Winter ProgramAre you a designer, hacker, engineer, aspiring researcher? - come join the Stanford Crowd Research initiative - a first of its kind massive open…
From insideHPC
How Much Does it Cost to Run an HPC Server in the Cloud?
In this video, David Bolton from Slashdot Media looks at the costs of running high-powered servers in the Cloud from three providers: AWS, Google and Microsoft. The Cloud computing services are compared by price, capability and…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: HPC Solutions Architect at Intel
Intel is seeking an HPC Solutions Architect in our Job of the Week.
The post Job of the Week: HPC Solutions Architect at Intel appeared first on insideHPC.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Half of Psych Studies Cannot be Reproduced
So what does reproduce ability mean? Look first at the kinds of bias involved.In the Verge: " A surprising number of psychology studies can’t be reproduced ... More than half of 100 tested studies produced different results…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Virtual Customer Experience
According to research by Gartner, 89 percent of executives are betting on customer experience as their primary mode of competition before the end of 2016.However, over the last few decades, customer experience and service delivery…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cognitive Legal Aide
Another example of cognitive assistance:" ... Boaz Carmelli gave an excellent presentation today on "Argumentor" as part of our Cognitive Systems Institute Speaker Series. Please continue the conversation here with Boaz, who's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple Pay Goes to China
In CWorld: " ... Apple partners with UnionPay to bring Apple Pay to China .... "China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China's leading banks, users will soon have a…
From Apophenia
What If Social Media Becomes 16-Plus? New battles concerning age of consent emerge in Europe
At what age should children be allowed to access the internet without parental oversight? This is a hairy question that raises all sorts of issues about rights, freedoms, morality, skills, and cognitive capability. Cultural values…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Penguins Fight over Squid
Watch this video of gentoo penguins fighting over a large squid. This underwater brawl was captured on a video camera taped to the back of the second penguin, revealing this unexpected foraging behaviour for the first time. "This…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Architecture of Data Science
Nicely done piece by Vincent Granville, about the 'architectural' considerations of data science. In roughly the order you should progress, but understanding you may have to revisit many elements more than once. Mostly nontechnical…
From Schneier on Security
GCHQ Holiday Puzzle
If you like puzzles, GCHQ has one for you. Just don't let it distract you from fighting the UK legislation giving the GCHQ new surveillance powers....
From insideHPC
Enabling New Frontiers in CFD Research at Argonne with Allinea DDT
Scientists from the Heat and Mass Transfer Technological Center (CTTC) at the Technical University of Catalonia in Spain have harnessed the extreme performance of the Mira supercomputer with their in-house multi-physics CFD code…
From insideHPC
Video: Seeking Submissions for New Papers Track at PASC16
In this video, David Keyes (KAUST) and Torsten Hoefler (ETH Zurich) discuss the new papers track at the PASC16 conference. After issuing their Call for Papers, the event will be held June 8-10, 2016 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
…From insideHPC
Call for Participation: ASC16 Student Supercomputer Challenge
The 2016 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC16) in China has issued its Call for Participation. As one of the largest Student Cluster Competitions in the world, the ASC16 initiative provides a unique opportunity for organizations…
From insideHPC
Visualizing Biomolecular Complexes on x86 and KNL Platforms: Integrating VMD and OSPRay
John Stone from the University of Illinois presented this talk at the Intel HPC Developer Conference at SC15. "VMD is designed for modeling, visualization, and analysis of biological systems such as proteins, nucleic acids, lipid…
From insideHPC
Irish Supercomputer List Reflects HPC Growth
The fifth Irish Supercomputer List was released today with a full ranking of the nation's HPC systems. Launched in November 2013 to raise the profile of High Performance Computing in Ireland and abroad, the list is updated twice…
From insideHPC
Is the Future CPU+GPU or CPU+FPGA?
"At SC15, IBM, in turn, announced new offerings centered "on the tight integration of IBM’s Power processors with accelerators." But it was an announcement about IBM’s interest in FPGAs that attracted attention. It has concluded…