Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2017
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at Storj Blockchain Technology in Cloud
In this podcast, Radio Free HPC looks at a Startup called Storj, which will pay you to use your excess data capacity as cloud-based storage based on Blockchain technology. “Our mission is to rethink cloud storage, to provide
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fuel Measurement and Security
A big area of security and measurement, could have considerable value ...
RFID-enabled Fuel-Monitoring System Connects to the Internet of Things
Customers in multiple countries report improved fuel accountability after adopting…
From Schneier on Security
A Survey of Propaganda
This is an excellent survey article on modern propaganda techniques, how they work, and how we might defend ourselves against them. Cory Doctorow summarizes the techniques on BoingBoing: ...in Russia, it's about flooding the…
From Computational Complexity
Should we learn from the Masters or the Pupils (Sequel)
From BLOG@CACM
Fact Versus Frivolity in Facebook
Facebook, for the sake of its own business integrity and for the sake of the public, should give up any attempt to guarantee veracity in items posted by users.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Do Solution Order Analytics
When I first read the below I did not understand the '2nd order' aspects, but then I thought, well yes .... it has to be applied. Like that the application is considered. But then should it not have been thought of in detail…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Moto Z Phone Embeds Alexa Capability
No experience with this kind of phone and capability. But an interesting further integration. Can we expect more of this to compete with other phone systems?
We’re changing the way people use their phones. Moto Mods are the
Amazon…
From Geeking with Greg
More quick links
Some of the tech news I found interesting lately, and you might too: "In addition to making our systems more intelligent, we have to make them more intelligible too ... AI systems to augment human capabilities ... A human-centered…
From insideHPC
Call for Papers: EuroMPI/USA 2017 in Chicago
"EuroMPI/USA 2017 will continue to focus on not just MPI, but also extensions or alternative interfaces for high-performance homogeneous/heterogeneous/hybrid systems, benchmarks, tools, parallel I/O, fault tolerance, and parallel…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Activity of Editing Bots on the Wikipedia
Do we understand the 'social' aspects of competing bots? In this case bots that are left to their own directives. You might think such examples have obscure results, but in this case they influence knowledge many of us access…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Liability and the Self Driving Car
In the CACM, about the process of self driving, and how that links to specific liability.
Here's Why Self-Driving Cars May Never Really Be Self-Driving
By Computerworld February 24, 2017
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University…
From insideHPC
The REX Neo: An Energy Efficient New Processor Architecture
"With a team of four and less than $2 million, REX has taken a design concept to reality in under a year with a 16 core processor manufactured on a modern TSMC 28nm process node. With this test silicon, REX is breaking the traditional…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sin Taxes and Behavioral Economics
Do sin taxes change consumer behavior? In Knowledge@Wharton. An example of Behavioral Economics. Can the results be simulated, used to directly predict measurable outcomes?
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Hololens Update
From Microsoft. An update with some impressive visuals. Still mostly very specialized things, still looking for some very breakthrough applications in typical business.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google AI in Game Play
Intriguing example, like the interaction of intelligence and games
Google's new AI has learned to become 'highly aggressive' in stressful situations
ScienceAlert
Bec Crew, ScienceAlert
" ... Now, researchers have been testing its…
From insideHPC
Call for Papers: HPEC 2017 in Waltham
The IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC 2017) has issued its Call for Papers. The conference takes place September 12-14 in Waltham, MA. "HPEC is the largest computing conference in New England and is the…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Cybersecurity Challenges in a World of AI
“From home assistants like the Amazon Echo to Google’s self-driving cars, artificial intelligence is slowly creeping into our lives. These new technologies could be enormously beneficial, but they also offer hackers unique opportunities…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Voice Authorization
I have not any issues like this, but it makes sense. Even better would be the abiity to differentiate between household members. No current assistant does this. Must be hard?
Voice-checking device stops hackers hijacking your…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Short Story
A short SF story in a tweet. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From Schneier on Security
My TEDMED Talk on Medical Data Privacy
Last November, I gave a talk at the TEDMED Conference on health and medical data privacy. The talk is online...
From The Eponymous Pickle
Looking More Closely at a Voice Retail Channel
Is Amazon’s Alexa a threat to rival retailers?
The author starts a conversation remarking on how much her family has taken to voice ordering. Does every kind of assistant insert their 'voice' into an interaction? A sales
In…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Doomsday Invention?
Following up on my reading of Bostrom's book: Superintelligence, this 2015 article. My take on this is that the dangers are still decades away, but does need to be thought about now.
The New Yorker, November 23, 2015
The Doomsday…
From insideHPC
Intel Skylake Comes to Google Cloud Platform
Today the Google Cloud Platform announced that it is the first cloud provider to offer the next generation Intel Xeon processor, codenamed Skylake. "Skylake includes Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX-512), which make it ideal…
From insideHPC
ADIOS 1.11 Middleware Moves I/O Framework from Research to Production
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced the latest release of its Adaptable I/O System (ADIOS), a middleware that speeds up scientific simulations on parallel computing resources such as the laboratory…
From insideHPC
Artificial Intelligence: It’s No Longer Science Fiction
"Computational science has come a long way with machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) in just the last year. Leading centers of high-performance computing are making great strides in developing and running ML/DL workloads…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Tech jobs are already largely automated
Lately, I have been reading a lot about the threat to computer jobs from automation. For example, we have AI systems that can write their own code. And billionaire Mark Cuban predicts that “software will soon begin writing itself…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Beacons for Personalized Service
Was recently asked to look at the status of beacon applications, new examples of increased 'intelligence' at play.
New Beacon Company Brings Intelligence to In-Flight Entertainment, Banks
Conichiwa, a spinoff of German hotel app…
From insideHPC
Beyond the Moore’s Law Cliff: The Next 1000X
In this video from the 2017 HPC Advisory Council Stanford Conference, Subhasish Mitra from Stanford presents: Beyond the Moore's Law Cliff: The Next 1000X. Professor Subhasish Mitra directs the Robust Systems Group in the Department…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Zebra SmartSense
This was brought to my attention. Zebra SmartSense™ for Retail Helps Retailers Execute Successful Omnichannel Fulfillment Strategies. " ... This innovative solution combines UHF RFID, video and a new micro-location capability…
From Schneier on Security
Palantir and the NSA
The Intercept has a long article on the relationship between Palantir Technologies and the NSA, based on the Snowden documents....