Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2017
From Schneier on Security
The "Extended Random" Feature in the BSAFE Crypto Library
Matthew Green wrote a fascinating blog post about the NSA's efforts to increase the amount of random data exposed in the TLS protocol, and how it interacts with the NSA's backdoor into the DUAL_EC_PRNG random number generator…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cognitive Services, Intelligent Chatbots call for Papers
Brought to my attention by Amit Sheth, LexisNexis Ohio Eminent Scholar
Cognitive Services and Intelligent Chatbots
Final submissions due: 01 May 2018, Publication issue: March/April 2019
Please email the guest editors a brief
Guest…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blockchain Based Electronic Marketplaces
Intriguing application idea. Inevitable managing control?
Decentralized Blockchain-Based Electronic Marketplaces By Hemang Subramanian Communications of the ACM, Vol. 61 No. 1, Pages 78-84 ....
Video
Abstract:
E-commerce…
From Computational Complexity
Complexity Year in Review 2017
Theorem of the year goes to the resolution of the dichotomy conjecture. I wrote about the conjecture in February and while the Feder et. al paper didn't hold up, two later papers seem to resolve the conjecture.
A dichotomy
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Why Alexa was a Hit
Good thoughts on how to make a novel to the consumer product sell.
Why Amazon Alexa Is Such a Hit This Holiday Season
Innovation, streamlined services, a product that works. Amazon is killing it. Are you doing the same? ...
By …
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC does their 2018 Technology Predictions
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews their 2017 technology predictions from last year. After that, we do our 2018 Predictions including a bombshell on who Rich thinks will acquire Cray by the end of the year.
TheRadio…
From insideHPC
Time-Lapse Video of Summit Supercomputer Installation
In this time-lapse video, engineers install the first racks of the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab. "Summit is the next leap in leadership-class computing systems for open science. With Summit we will be able to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More In-Car Assistants
More indication that the new year will feature automotive assistance, with increasing sophistication as to automotive context. Will be testing.
Hyundai and Kia will offer AI assistants in 2019 cars
You'll see the first hints
Jon…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will Tech Dominate Retail?
Debate and Discussion ....
BrainTrust throwdown: Is it inevitable that tech companies will dominate retail? by Rick Moss in Retailwire
From its origins with the Dutch West India Company through numerous evolutions, commerce is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Benchmarking AI Performance
Worth while thoughts in the Cisco Blog:
Towards an industry standard for benchmarking AI
In tandem with this transformative process is the need for industry standards for benchmarking hardware and software systems and how they…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Path to Better Decision Making
Highly visual piece from McKinsey. I like the visual, yet still precise views here. Not an infographic, which can be sloppy.
The path to better decisions means untangling the crossed web of accountability, one decision at a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simulators for Quantum Computing
Simulators allow us to guide the future of direction of research for more universal solutions.
Two New Simulators Tease Future of Quantum Computing By Jeremy Hsu
A universal quantum computer capable of outperforming today’s classical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Library of Congress Stops Archiving all Tweets
The LOC started archiving tweets in 2006, but has now announced it will do so only very selectively, of historically important material, starting in the new year.
From Schneier on Security
Post-Quantum Algorithms
NIST has organized a competition for public-key algorithms secure against a quantum computer. It recently published all of its Round 1 submissions. (Details of the NIST efforts are here. A timeline for the new algorithms is here…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Supercomputing Osteogenesis
In this podcast, Zaira Martín-Moldes and Davoud Ebrahimi describe their computational research into how bones form. "The authors used XSEDE supercomputers to model the protein folding of integrin, an essential step in the intracellular…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Personal reflections on 2017
Year 2017 is coming to an end. As a kid, I would have surely imagined that by 2017, I would be living in space. But then I can chat with Amazon’s servers through the “Alexa” persona. It is not space, but it is cool. It is the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dot Assistants Dominate the Market
Will this mean that Amazon will control the assistant infrastructure, at least in the consumer space? Again, better skills and improved architecture need to be included.
Amazon’s Echo Dot sales crushed it over the holiday season…
From Schneier on Security
Acoustical Attacks against Hard Drives
Interesting destructive attack: "Acoustic Denial of Service Attacks on HDDs": Abstract: Among storage components, hard disk drives (HDDs) have become the most commonly-used type of non-volatile storage due to their recent technological…
From insideHPC
Deep Learning and Automatic Differentiation from Theano to PyTorch
Inquisitive minds want to know what causes the universe to expand, how M-theory binds the smallest of the small particles or how social dynamics can lead to revolutions. "The way that statisticians answer these questions is with…
From insideHPC
Trinity Supercomputer lands at #7 on TOP500
The Trinity Supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory was recently named as a top 10 supercomputer on two lists: it made number three on the High Performance Conjugate Gradients (HPCG) Benchmark project, and is number seven…
From insideHPC
Xtreme Design Demo at SC17
In this video from SC17, Naoki Shibata from Xtreme Design demonstrates the company's innovative solutions for deploying and managing HPC clouds. "Customers can use our easy-to-deploy turnkey HPC cluster system on public cloud…
From Schneier on Security
"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" Parody
Funny....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reading on Screens
Scientists say screens hurt our ability to comprehend the information we read By Luke Dormehl
... According to a new piece of research coming out of Pennsylvania State University, adult readers who spend a lot of time using
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Balancing Social Media?
Intriguing, but seems this could also be directly misused.
Conflicting Views on Social Media Balanced By an Algorithm
Aalto University
Researchers at Aalto University in Finland and the University of Rome Tor Vergata in Italy have…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Map's Moat
Google Map's Moat. Mapping is modeling, for and about a particular context. So the details and comparison between Apple and Google are fascinating. Been using both to compare myself, but am not seeing all the details.
How far…
From insideHPC
12 Days of Christmas from Radio Free HPC & Dan Olds
In this video, Dan Olds from Radio Free HPC offers up his rant-filled rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas. The Radio Free HPC podcast is a joint production by industry pundits focused on High Performance Computing. "To all
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Leveraging Consumer DNA
Should marketers personalize products using consumers’ DNA? by Tom Ryan in Retailwire with discussion.
According to a study from the University of South Carolina, marketers will soon be able to derive “hyper-personalized” shopper…
From insideHPC
2018 Technology Trends from Mellanox CTO Michael Kagan
In this video, Mellanox CTO Michael Kagan offers his view of technology trends for 2018. "Mellanox is looking forward to continued to Technology and Product Leadership in 2018. As the leader in End-to-End InfiniBand and Ethernet…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Submits Comments Supporting Security Research DMCA Exemption
On December 19, USACM submitted a short comment to the Copyright Office in support of an exemption to the prohibitions against circumvention of copyright protection technology, as outlined in Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business History
Video and transcript from Bain:
The prevailing paradigm that has underpinned business for the past 50 years is beginning to shift. Over the next 10 years, we will see the nature of the firm reshaped by the cumulative impact of…