Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2020
From The Eponymous Pickle
Comments on Fords Manufacturing Use of AI
In the past had many connections with Ford in analytics use, now they are talking AI. Here where they are talking applications in manufacturing.
Ford’s Use of AI an Example of Shaping of Innovation in MIT Future of Work Session…From insideHPC
Open Eye Consortium Announces 50Gbps LR1 and LR4 Specs for 5G
Dec. 15, 2020 — The Open Eye Consortium (Open Eye MSA) announced two new specifications targeted for 50Gbps per lane applications: LR1 and LR4 for 10 kilometers, based on the CWDM4 wavelength grid, over a single mode fiber. These…
From insideHPC
EdgeConneX Increases Interconnection Options at Atlanta Data Center Campus with Bandwidth IG
Herndon, VA, – December 15, 2020 – EdgeConneX, developer of edge data centers, has announced Bandwidth Infrastructure Group (Bandwidth IG) is now available at its Atlanta data center campus, ATL01 and ATL02. This addition increases…
From insideHPC
Pure Storage Announces Pure as-a-Service in AWS
Mountain View, Calif. – December 15, 2020 — Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) today announced the availability of Pure as-a-Service in AWS Marketplace and a new Cloud Block Store Efficiency Guarantee program. Pure Storage works with …
From Putting People First
Human-Centered Design Playbook by Australia’s Victoria State Government
This guide brings together key ideas showing how we can integrate human-centred design into our work in government and build the capability of public servants.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Converting floating-point numbers to integers while preserving order
Many programming languages have a number type corresponding to the IEEE binary64. In many languages such as Java or C++, it is called a double. A double value uses 64 bits and it represents a significand (or mantissa) multiplied…
From insideHPC
ICM and SBI to Collaborate on Use of Garuda, Other Scientific Software Platforms
Dec. 14 – A memorandum of understanding between ICM University of Warsaw, Poland and Tokyo based The Systems Biology Institute (SBI) which was signed recently signals a beginning of a research and development collaboration between…
From insideHPC
Quantum Acquires Digital Asset Management Specialist Square Box Systems
San Jose, — Dec. 14, 2020 — Quantum Corp. (NASDAQ: QMCO) today announced it has acquired Square Box Systems Ltd, a specialist in data cataloging, user collaboration, and digital asset management software. The acquisition builds…
From Schneier on Security
US Schools Are Buying Cell Phone Unlocking Systems
Gizmodo is reporting that schools in the US are buying equipment to unlock cell phones from companies like Cellebrite:
Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas…From Schneier on Security
Mexican Drug Cartels with High-Tech Spyware
Sophisticated spyware, sold by surveillance tech companies to Mexican government agencies, are ending up in the hands of drug cartels:
As many as 25 private companies — including the Israeli company NSO Group and the Italian …From Schneier on Security
Zodiac Killer Cipher Solved
The SF Chronicle is reporting (more details here), and the FBI is confirming, that a Melbourne mathematician and team has decrypted the 1969 message sent by the Zodiac Killer to the newspaper.
There’s no paper yet, but there …From Schneier on Security
Another Massive Russian Hack of US Government Networks
The press is reporting a massive hack of US government networks by sophisticated Russian hackers.
Officials said a hunt was on to determine if other parts of the government had been affected by what looked to be one of the most…From BLOG@CACM
Time to Resurrect PSP?
The Personal Software Process encourages programmer discipline. Largely forgotten, it does have a few wrinkles, but understanding and applying its core ideas remains as fruitful as ever.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Launches Live Translation for Alexa
In the enterprise we looked at efficient ways to translate consumer comments. Just tried the Alexa real-time translation mode in German - English. Is now on all devices it seems. Works well ... You could do this previously…
From Schneier on Security
Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?
Persuasion is as old as our species. Both democracy and the market economy depend on it. Politicians persuade citizens to vote for them, or to support different policy positions. Businesses persuade consumers to buy their products…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Quest for More Common Sense: Less Thinking?
Nicely put piece that connects with the current state of the technology. And shows some of the challenges. Have been involved in a number of attempts at including common sense in reasoning, without general success. BackThe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon's Autonomous Robo Taxi
Have never thought of Amazon in the autonomous vehicle space. But here a reminder of an effort, apparently aimed at taxi service.
Amazon's Zoox shows off its first autonomous robotaxi
The tiny four-wheeled vehicle is bi-directional…From insideHPC
AccelerComm Joins The O-RAN Alliance for Interoperability and Spectral Efficiency for Open 5G Networks
Southampton, UK – 14 December 2020: AccelerComm, the 5G spectrum efficiency IP specialist, today announced that it has joined The O-RAN ALLIANCE, an industry association with a mission to re-shape mobile networks to be more intelligent…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Search Not Completely Solved in Context
Indeed it works very well. But we all experience examples where it falls flat. Often because it does not know the context of its use. We cheerfully act as the intelligent editor of the process, unless it induces risk or chaos…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Automating IOT Programming
Automation should in particular address issues of security
Tool Will Automate Device Programming in the IOT
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain)
By Augustín López
Researchers at Spain's Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and…From insideHPC
Building an Exascale-Class Data Center for ORNL’s Incoming Frontier Supercomputer
Oak Ridge National Laboratory issued the following today, an update by staff science writer Coury Turczyn, on progress made in the construction of a data center capable of supporting ORNL’s Frontier exascale system, scheduled…
From insideHPC
Telechips Picks Arm IP for Automotive SoC
Cambridge, UK – December 14, 2020 – Arm today announced that Telechips, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in automotive applications, has selected a leading-edge suite of Arm IP for its next-generation automotive system…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Dreidel Game–A Chanukah Programming Project
If you’re anything like me, you like to assign projects that have some relationship to what is going on in the world. Holidays are one such thing. December brings the Jewish holiday of Chanukah – usually right before Christmas…
From insideHPC
University of Stuttgart’s Hawk HPC System to Go CPU-GPU for Deep Learning Workloads
Add the High Performance Computing Center at the University of Stuttgart (HLRS) to the list of supercomputing organizations going from CPU-only to CPU-GPU architectures. HLRS announced this morning it will add Nvidia graphic
…
From insideHPC
Deep Learning GPU Cluster
In this whitepaper, "Deep Learning GPU Cluster," our friends over at Lambda walk you through the Lambda Echelon multi-node cluster reference design: a node design, a rack design, and an entire cluster level architecture. This…
From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
From Schneier on Security
Authentication Failure
This is a weird story of a building owner commissioning an artist to paint a mural on the side of his building — except that he wasn’t actually the building’s owner.
The fake landlord met Hawkins in person the day after Thanksgiving…From The Eponymous Pickle
On Salesforce Buying Slack
Salesforce buying Slack. Is this Deeper collaboration? Can see some interesting things coming out of this when combined with Salesforces' work in AI.
Salesforce + Slack mashup signals the rise of Deep Collaboration in Venturebeat…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
ARM MacBook vs Intel MacBook: a SIMD benchmark
In my previous blog post, I compared the performance of my new ARM-based MacBook Pro with my 2017 Intel-based MacBook Pro. I used a number parsing benchmark. In some cases, the ARM-based MacBook Pro was nearly twice as fast as…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thinking about Approaching Tidy Data
Below an intro on the concept. We laid out and used similar ideas, this organizes it well. First stated by Hadley Wickham in his paper. Hard to fully achieve because of context, but very useful.
A must…