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 insideHPC
HPC’s Future Lies in Remote Visualization
Remote visualization is at the intersection of cloud, big data, and high performance computing. And the ability to look at complex data sets using only a mobile phone’s data rate is not some fantasy of the future. It is reality…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Lectures are the lazy person’s approach to education
Roger Schank is a famous computer science professor. His take on lectures is just brilliant: We still have lectures for one main reason. They are the lazy person’s approach to education. Both lectures and listeners agree that…
From insideHPC
Video: HPC Transforms SC Student Volunteers
In this video, former SC Conference Student Volunteer Christine Harvey describes how volunteering led to her current career at Mitre Corporation.
From Schneier on Security
Understanding NSA Malware
Here are two essays trying to understand NSA malware and how it works, in light of the enormous number of documents released by Speigel recently....
From Computational Complexity
Richard Hamming Centenary
From Putting People First
Privacy is fast becoming the real disruptive force in digital technology
Data harvesting, data mining and analysis has transformed the way we look at our mobile devices and computer screens. Content is now adaptive and responsive to our behaviour. But, writes Paul Levy, Senior Researcher in Innovation…
From insideHPC
Video: Recent Developments in Cooling, Power Management, and Usability
"As HPC systems and solutions become more focused on specific workloads, the need to address system level power, cooling, and power management while maintaining usability remains. This presentation will review recent developments…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google and Neural Nets
A look at what Geoffrey Hinton has been doing at Google with artificial neural nets. We examined his work in the 80s. Used it to mimic some things that had been done with statistics before. Now it has taken off to enhance…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Coding lessons for 8-10 yr olds
Are you a tweeting teacher who teaches K-8 computer science? If so I am hoping you can join the CSTA K-8 task group for the next #CSK8 Twitter chat on Wed Feb 11 8pm EST. Please forward the invitation to other teacher/specialists…
From Putting People First
The Internet of Insecure Things
In a recent study, every connected home security system tested by HP contained significant vulnerabilities, including but not limited to password security, encryption, and authentication issues. HP’s Fortify on Demand security…
From insideHPC
Video: The Evolution of HPC Usage at PayPal
"PayPal is a world-class leader in online and offline payment innovations. This tradition continues by combining enterprise and HPC architectures to deliver integrated solutions to large scale compute and analytics problems. …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Managing Remotely
In the HBR. A classic problem. Increasingly common. " ... How do you overcome the challenges of supervising employees in different locations and time zones? What steps should you take to build trust and open lines of communication…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Visualization Playbook
Nicely thought out approach. Agree that data visualization is essential, and after obtaining the data should be the first thing that is done, to start understanding the data and its form. The data has a story to tell. In"…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Submits Comments For Security Research DMCA Exemption
On February 6 USACM submitted a short comment to The Copyright Office in support of an exemption to the prohibitions against circumvention outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Our comments were in support…
From The Eponymous Pickle
This Blog as Knowledge Repository
I have often used this blog, and others I have run, as a knowledge repository. For both things I want to point out to people, and for my personal (but still public) store of resources. I have started, in 2015, to includeInternet…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing New Materials with HPC Wales
HPC Wales has partnered with the engineering team at Deregallera Ltd to develop new materials that will make better use of the planet’s resources.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartstones Communicate by Gesture
I see that the startup SmartStones, which I have been communicating with for some time, has launched. More here and participation information. " ... Smartstones Touch is a wearable, sensorial device that let you send messages…
From insideHPC
UK Met Office to Debug New Cray Systems with Allinea DDT
The UK Met Office is rolling out the Allinea DDT debugger on its newest supercomputers. The debugging tool will be used to help the scientists and developers to develop their widely used forecasting software for the new Cray …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Automated Story Generation
Will journalism ultimately be mostly automated? Some moves in that direction. People still set the parameters. Would like to see how the outlines of a story are defined.
From BLOG@CACM
What Is Your Research Culture? Part 3: The Web of Science
Experienced institutions know that the Web of Science is inapplicable to the evaluation of computer science research and researchers. It is time that others learned too.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Washington News – Alerts and Updates
General News • USACM submitted a statement to the U.S. Copyright Office in support of a proposed security research exemption to the prohibitions against circumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Multiple…
From insideHPC
Addressing the Problem with Collaborative Secure Data Sharing
As you’ve increasingly seen in news headlines, secure access to shared data is not only an issue for Federal and local government agencies and the Intelligence Community – it has also become an issue for business enterprises …
From insideHPC
LANL Supercomputer Finds New Life at UNM
In this KRQE video, the University of New Mexico readies the Ulam supercomputer for deployment. Named after famed mathematician and Manhattan Project scientist Stanislaw Ulam, the 13-rack system was previously used at Los Alamos…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Governance and Big Data
In SiliconAngle: Good introductory piece on the topic. How do you control the data and analyses you do with your big data?" ... The past week witnessed a number of major milestones in evolution of enterprise analytics across…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Learning From the Code Hunt Dashboard
This week I am in Redmond WA at a two day workshop around Code Hunt being run by Microsoft Research and the developers behind Code Hunt. After day one I can say I have learned a lot. I’ve been using Code Hunt with my honorsCode…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gershenfeld on a New Digital Reality
Interesting Edge conversation with Neil Gershenfeld of MIT. We connected with him there a number of times in the early days of remote manufacture. That world is starting to mature. " ... ...Today, you can send a design to…
From Schneier on Security
National Academies Report on Bulk Intelligence Collection
In January, the National Academies of Science (NAS) released a report on the bulk collection of signals intelligence. Basically, a year previously President Obama tasked the Director of National Intelligence with assessing "the…
From Wild WebMink
Who Else Listens To Your TV?
Samsung’s Smart TV listens to everything you say all the time you have voice control enabled. No surprise there. But Samsung’s Terms warn that it’s likely to be sending all that audio to a service provider for analysis, rather…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIST Global City Teams Challenge Tech Jam
The Global City Teams Challenge, an initiative by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and US Ignite, is designed to advance the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within a smart city / smart…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of February 9
February 11: The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing titled “The Connected World: Examining the Internet of Things.” 10 a.m., 253 Russell Building February 12: The Subcommittee on Early Childhood…