Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
Japanese Hotel to Be Staffed by Robots
New robotic service application. Here in Japan. " ... This summer, a hotel will open in the Netherlands-themed Huis Ten Bosch amusement park in Nagasaki, Japan. It will have 72 rooms. Room fees will start at $60 per night.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Warning of a Digital Dark Age
Despite methods like the Internet Archive, in the BBC:" ... Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet", says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost. Currently a Google…
From Putting People First
Changing behaviour for a better deal? Not as easy as it sounds
There are many areas of life – e.g. utility providers – where we could be getting a better deal by making what seems to be an easy switch. Behavioural scientist Nathalie Spencer of The RSA asks why we don’t do it more often.…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC on Lenovo’s Slipup with Superfish
While Lenovo now scrambles into Damage Control mode in the wake of the Superfish scandal, the question for our readers is: how will this affect Lenovo's ability to sell to the U.S. Federal supercomputing market?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 23 February 2015
It's February break for my school. I’m trying to take it easy this week. And catching up with grading of course. I suspect a lot of teachers use so-called vacation time to catch up on school work like grading and planning. ICS…
From insideHPC
LBNL Joins OpenMP ARB
This week Berkeley Lab joined the OpenMP Architecture Review Board (ARB), a group of leading hardware and software vendors and research organizations creating the standard for the most popular shared-memory parallel programming…
From BLOG@CACM
Computing Education Must Go Beyond Intuition: The Need For Evidence-Based Practice
Computing educators' practice would dramatically improve if we drew on evidence, rather than intuition.
From The Eponymous Pickle
HBR: Data Scientist as Sexiest Job
Probably, but still on a wave of hype, as currently defined .... Is Decision Scientist next?
From Putting People First
The Emergence of Law and Behavioural Science: A European Perspective
The Emergence of Law and Behavioural Science: A European Perspective by Anne-Lise Sibony (Université de Liège) and Alberto Alemanno (HEC Paris; NYU School of Law) February 16, 2015 Introductory chapter to the forthcoming book…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson and Jeopardy at the Brink
Jim Hendler mentions how close Ken Jenning's came to winning the Jeopardy competition over Watson - very true - check out his TED talk about after the event and his reflections How much would this event have changed a new future…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Launches Azure Machine Learning
Newly announced:" ... Microsoft officially announced at the Strata Conference today, the general availability of the Azure Machine Learning service for big data processing in the cloud. It also announced some enhancements toAs…
From insideHPC
Students: Apply Now for Summer of HPC in Europe
PRACE is seeking students interested in spending the summer working abroad at a European High Performance Computing (HPC) Centre.
From insideHPC
New Algorithm Real-Time Simulations in Materials Research
Researchers at LBNL have have developed a new algorithm that opens the door for real-time simulations in atomic-level materials research.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Layers in Big Data
Bernard Marr on data layers that comprise big data. Very nice, instructive and non technical, this is the essential part of defining what Big Data is.
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Does the Term Cognitive Assistance Mean?
A Linkedin Discussion started in the CSG group by Frank Stein, Director of Analytics Solution Center at IBM. I have added some additional examples and commentsWhat Does the Term "Cognitive Assistance" mean? .... A US Government…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NGrams, Data and Patterns in Human Culture
A data lens to human culture. As yet unread, but of interest. Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture Hardcover – December 26, 2013 by Erez Aiden (Author), Jean-Baptiste Michel (Author) See also here." ... Between…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Liquid Metal Electronics
In Gizmag: Possible application to 3D printing, reminds me of a product development fabrication experiment long ago. Probably not useful in my realm, but fascinating.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simple Graph Plotting
Brought to my attention, a simple way to deliver plots. Not perfect or anywhere near complete, but I like to collect simple means. I have Tableau, Excel and half dozen other means at hand too.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Realtime Strategic execution
Trends in 2015, the need for real time" ... Project teams will deliberate less and plan in real-time more. Companies will recognize a cultural difference as a point of strength, rather than a source of confusion. And, more than…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
President and FAA Act On Drone Activity
On February 15th the President issued an Executive Memorandum on the domestic use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS/drones). That same day the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed new regulations for the routine use…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Can Recode Their Genetic Makeup
This is freaky: A new study showcases the first example of an animal editing its own genetic makeup on-the-fly to modify most of its proteins, enabling adjustments to its immediate surroundings. As usual, you can also use this…
From Schneier on Security
Man-in-the-Middle Attacks on Lenovo Computers
It's not just national intelligence agencies that break your https security through man-in-the-middle attacks. Corporations do it, too. For the past few months, Lenovo PCs have shipped with an adware app called Superfish that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shopping Through the Lens of IT
In the ACM " ... Pennsylvania State University (PSU) researchers are studying how smart cameras could eventually guide visually impaired shoppers to find the items they need.The researchers are using a $10-million U.S. National…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Preps the Data
A prediction that Watson Analytics will also prepare the data. Often a tedious and error prone activity. There are many aspects of preparing and scrubbing data.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simulating Architectures in a Game World
From today's CSIG talk. Slides at the link. The use of simulation and game technologies to understand the operation of alternative architectures. Here specifically about cognitive (reasoning) technology, but once you present…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Does the Term Cognitive Assistant Mean?
A Linkedin discussion on the topic, which includes some comments of my own on several systems we built that have been mentioned here. Assistance can mean to augment someone's skills, using data or knowledge. It can also scale…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Today’s BASIC Is Not Your Father’s BASIC
A post at Doug Peterson’s blog (A Different Time) sent me to a site that has a collection of old BASIC programs. And by old I mean the 1970s. I remember many of these programs as I was starting my programming career back then…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Principal HPC Architect at Aberdeen Proving Ground
The Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland is seeking a Principal HPC Architect in our Job of the Week. The candidate will performs studies and develops new HPC technology architecture recommendations for the DSRC enterprise in …
From insideHPC
Video: HPC Transforms Students with Mentorships at SC15
In this video, Ken Kraft from Intel describes his experiences as a participant in SC Conference Mentor-Protege program. "The SC15 conference is broadening its mission to build a strong and diverse HPC student community at both…
From insideHPC
OpenPOWER Summit Announces Speaker Lineupfor March Conference
This week the OpenPOWER Foundation announced their lineup of speakers for the inaugural OpenPOWER Summit at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, March 17-19.