Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2016
From insideHPC
Comet Supercomputer at SDSC Helps Confirm Gravitational Wave Discovery
The NSF-funded Comet supercomputer at SDSC was one of several high-performance computers used by researchers to help confirm that the discovery of gravitational waves before a formal announcement was made.
The post Comet Supercomputer…From Schneier on Security
Simultaneous Discovery of Vulnerabilities
In the conversation about zero-day vulnerabilities and whether "good" governments should disclose or hoard vulnerabilities, one of the critical variables is independent discovery. That is, if it is unlikely that someone else…
From insideHPC
Slidecast: Making HPC Clouds Productive
In this video from the 2016 Stanford HPC Conference, Jason Stowe from Cycle Computing presents: Making Clouds Productive. "Nine years of Cloud HPC experiences has taught us a number of lessons about things like security, scale…
From insideHPC
Altair’s PBS Pro to Manage Workload for New NCAR Supercomputer
"Supercomputing is vital to NCAR’s research and this new system will be an important tool for researchers across the United States,” said Anke Kamrath, director of operations and services at NCAR’s Computational and Information…
From insideHPC
Video: Programming Models for Exascale Systems
"This talk will focus on programming models and their designs for upcoming exascale systems with millions of processors and accelerators. Current status and future trends of MPI and PGAS (UPC and OpenSHMEM) programming models…
From Putting People First
Design as Participation (Beyond User-Centered Design)
In this long essay, published in MIT’s brand new Journal of Design and Science, Kevin Slavin argues that designers of complex adaptive systems are not strictly designing systems themselves. They are, he says, hinting those systems…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Biases in High Stakes Decision Making
Talk today on a favorite topic: Cognitive Bias. I will post links to presentation afterwards:" ... Just a reminder about our Cognitive Systems Institute Group Speaker Series on Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 10:30 am ET (7…
From insideHPC
Prefetching Data for Intel Xeon Phi
"Prefetching on a coprocessor such as the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor can be more important than on a main CPU such as the Intel Xeon CPUs. Since the cores on the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor are in-order, they cannot hide memory…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Joins Nutanix Alliance for Enterprise Infrastructure
Today Mellanox announced that it has joined the Nutanix Elevate Technology Alliance Program to provide a simple to use and fully converged solution for compute, storage and networking to enterprise customers. The Mellanox SX1012…
From updated sporadically at best
A Game Called "Professor"
I first wrote this as a Facebook post and am reposting it here so it's easier to find. I have been playing a game called "Professor." Still learning the rules, but here's what I have so far.You are assigned an avatar, institution…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Making AI more Human
This direction makes sense, have not looked at the details yet. In TechRepublic: Towards more human Watson APIs . That's good " .... IBM Watson, Big Blue's cognitive computing division, announced Tuesday that it was…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business is as Valuable as Your Customers
In K@W: Some useful, perhaps obvious thoughts here. As I always say, stay closer to the business." .... Many businesses will say that their customers are their most valuable assets, but few understand how true that is — or…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Urban Stores
In WCPO: Would think there would be more opportunities to make smaller footprint urban stores more profitable with smart interactions with the consumer.
From Computational Complexity
Primary Game Theory
[Nominations open for the SIGACT Distinguished Service Prize. Deadline: April 1] The US presidential primaries have not gone as expected as you can see from the crazy shifts in the prediction markets. This year besides the usual…
From Schneier on Security
The Importance of Strong Encryption to Security
Encryption keeps you safe. Encryption protects your financial details and passwords when you bank online. It protects your cell phone conversations from eavesdroppers. If you encrypt your laptop -- and I hope you do -- it protects…
From Putting People First
Patients know best: Qualitative study on how families use patient-controlled personal health records
Patients Know Best: Qualitative Study on How Families Use Patient-Controlled Personal Health By Hanna Schneider, Susan Hill, and Ann Blandford Journal of Medical Internet Research 2016;18(2):e43 Background: Self-management technologies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Powering Aircraft Systems
From the Bike Shop: Smart Power:" .... In addition to optimizing performance, efficiency and reliability in aircraft power systems, “GE Aviation is taking on a greater degree of system integration responsibility,” says JoeTo…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Computational Thinking — What does it mean to you?
How do you integrate computational thinking (CT) concepts and strategies into your teaching? Have you heard your colleagues talk about it and wondered if they have accurate and useful understandings of how CT can be used across…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NBC Programmatic Selling
I am following the widening thread here here. Recall my mention of our work in this area, see the tag below. Don't know exactly what analytics are being done here, but can guess. Opportunities for true optimization here. Where…
From Apophenia
What is the Value of a Bot?
Bots are tools, designed by people and organizations to automate processes and enable them to do something technically, socially, politically, or economically. Most of the bots that I have built have been in the pursuit of laziness…
From insideHPC
Video: The Road to the Sierra/Coral Supercomputer
"As it readies for Sierra, a new IBM-based platform, LLNL is not only defining the metrics as it paves the road to Coral, it is taking the first giant steps on the path toward Exascale. This talk will provide an overview of Coral…
From BLOG@CACM
State of the States: Progress Toward CS For All
Achieving the President's goal of CS for All requires change at the local level. Here's the current state of the states.
From insideHPC
TUM Munich Researchers Develop Nanolasers for Silicon Photonics
Scientists have developed a process to deposit nano-lasers directly onto silicon chips, paving the way for fast and efficient data processing using silicon photonics. Physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Think More about the Causality
Nicely done, and for the method I often give for driving value in analytics, bring your business reasoning closer to the analytics. Its the business that is of most importance. In Yanir Seroussi's blog: Why you should stopEverywhere…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nokia's Cognitive Services Platform
Been looking at how 'cognitive' can be integrated with services in platforms. Here is an example from Nokia: " ... Our Nokia AVA cognitive services platform delivers today’s services quickly and flawlessly. It also helps you…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Push on Wearables in the Enterprise
Push for wearables in the enterprise. Mostly watches it seems, which are not much different than smartphone devices. Devices that engage more deliberately with users, usually for specialty applications, are also starting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the State of Human Capital
From Growthology Kauffman Foundation. " ... This post is the first in a series by the Growthology team, where we will take a look at some of the topics discussed in State of the Field, a compilation of knowledge on entrepreneurship…
From Schneier on Security
Eavesdropping by the Foscam Security Camera
Brian Krebs has a really weird story about the build-in eavesdropping by the Chinese-made Foscam security camera: Imagine buying an internet-enabled surveillance camera, network attached storage device, or home automation gizmo…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Dear Colleague Letter- Fostering the Development of the National Brain Observatory
On April 2, 2013, President Obama launched the Brain Research though Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative as a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new…
From insideHPC
ANSYS Simulation Technology Speeds ORECA Race Car Design
"Reliability and accuracy are crucial when it comes to developing successful cars," said David Floury, Technical Director of ORECA. "ANSYS is a key player in the motorsport industry and their solutions provide our engineers with…