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 Schneier on Security
SHA-1 Collision Found
The first collision in the SHA-1 hash function has been found. This is not a surprise. We've all expected this for over a decade, watching computing power increase. This is why NIST standardized SHA-3 in 2012....
From My Biased Coin
SIGACT Distinguished Service Prize Call, 2017
Call for Nominations
2017 SIGACT Distinguished Service Prize
The Theory community benefits in many ways from the dedicated service, above and beyond the call of duty, of many of its members. Among other contributions, the field's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Superintelligence Considered
Quite late, but making my way through the well known Superintelligence book by Nick Bostrom. Some quite fascinating statistics of the futurist kind that are worth looking at. Will the development of AI being seen today, that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What to Expect from AI
What to Expect from AI. Reasonably good overview from MIT Sloan Review. An executive overview, some registration required for the full report. " ... To understand how advances in artificial intelligence are likely to change…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Role of Dialog Talk
From Today's talk:
Murray Campbell on “The Role of Dialog in Augmented Intelligence” IBM Research
Slides. Talk recording.
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: GPU Performance Analysis Architect at Nvidia
Nvidia is seeking a GPU Performance Analysis Architect in our Job of the Week. "The NVIDIA GPU Compute Architecture group is seeking world-class architects to analyze processor and system architecture performance of full applications…
From insideHPC
Applications Now Open for Student Volunteers at SC17 Conference
Applications are now being accepted for the Student Volunteers program at the SC17 conference to be held Nov. 12-17 in Denver. Both undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to apply. "Being a Student Volunteer can be…
From insideHPC
Video: Multi-Physics Methods, Modeling, Simulation & Analysis
"Through multiscale simulation of the circulatory system, it is now possible to model this surgery and optimize it using the state of the art optimization techniques. In-silico analysis has allowed us to test new surgical design…
From insideHPC
Jennifer Chayes from Microsoft Research to Keynote ISC 2017
Today ISC 2017 announced that data scientist, Prof. Dr. Jennifer Tour Chayes from Microsoft Research will give the opening keynote at the conference. “I'll discuss in some detail two particular applications: the very efficient…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF and Big Data Hubs Receive Cloud Credits for Big Data Research
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft will participate in it’s new Critical Techniques, Technologies and Methodologies for Advancing Foundations and Applications…
From insideHPC
Intel DAAL Accelerates Data Analytics and Machine Learning
Intel DAAL is a high-performance library specifically optimized for big data analysis on the latest Intel platforms, including Intel Xeon®, and Intel Xeon Phi™. It provides the algorithmic building blocks for all stages in data…
From Computational Complexity
Ken Arrow and Oscars Voting
Kenneth Arrow, the Nobel Prize winning economist known for his work on social choice and general equilibrium, passed away Tuesday at the age of 95.
I can't cover Arrow's broad influential work in this blog post even if I were…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Global Impact of Open Data
Free EBook from O'Reilly.
The Global Impact of Open Data
Key Findings from Detailed Case Studies Around the World
Open data has spurred economic innovation, social transformation, and fresh forms of political and government accountability…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Future of TV
Walt Mossberg looks at the future of TV, from cable driven to TV as an intelligent service A thoughtful and frustrating view of progress. I am ready to try something new here, my estimate is that 90% of what we are paying…
From insideHPC
Mentor Graphics Adds Univa Grid Engine to Veloce Emulation Platform
"It is extremely important that customers using the Veloce emulation platform maximize the usability of their datacenter-based emulation resources," said Eric Selosse, vice president and general manager of the Mentor Emulation…
From insideHPC
Asetek Enters Product Development Agreement with Major Datacenter Player
Today liquid-cooling technology provider Asetek announced that the company has signed a development agreement with a "major player" in the data center space. "This development agreement is the direct result of several years of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Role of Dialog in Augmented Intelligence
Looking forward to this talk, precisely what we attempted in a number of expertise augmentation and Bot delivery applications. Its still a big challenge,
Dear Professors, Students, IBMers and others,
This a reminder about our…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC @ AAAS 2017- Health in Your Pocket: Diagnosing and Treating Disease with Smartphones
The following blog post is by CCC Director Ann Drobnis with contributions from Gregory Hager, Member of the CCC Healthcare task force and Director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare at Johns Hopkins University…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Home is Where the Bot is
McKinsey on Bots in the home.
A smart home is where the bot is
By Jean-Baptiste Coumau, Hiroto Furuhashi, and Hugo Sarrazin
Within a decade, our living spaces will be enhanced by a host of new devices and technologies, performing…
From insideHPC
Emerson Roxar Applies ebb3 Remote Visualization for Oil & Gas
Today UK-based ebb3 announced that Emerson Automation Solutions is deploying high-performance software for the oil and gas industry virtually using ebb3’s remote visualization technology. "The Roxar reservoir management software…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Applying Design Thinking in the Organization
Good introduction to design thinking. With pointers to lots of resources.
How to apply design thinking in your organization
Design thinking helps organizations grow, innovate, and improve financial performance.
By Jonathan Follett…
From insideHPC
Video: Containerizing Distributed Pipes
Hagen Toennies from Gaikai Inc. presented this deck at the 2017 HPC Advisory Council Stanford Conference. "In this talk we will present how we enable distributed, Unix style programming using Docker and Apache Kafka. We will
…
From insideHPC
NSF Funds HPC Cluster at Penn State
The Penn State Cyber-Laboratory for Astronomy, Materials, and Physics (CyberLAMP) is acquiring a high-performance computer cluster that will facilitate interdisciplinary research and training in cyberscience and is funded by
…
From insideHPC
DDN Ranked #1 in HPC Storage Market
Today DDN announced that it was once again ranked as the top storage provider among HPC sites surveyed by Intersect360 Research. “High-performance sites are incredibly challenging IT environments with massive data requirements…
From insideHPC
TACC’s Dan Stanzione on the Challenges Driving HPC
In this video from KAUST, Dan Stanzione, executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, shares his insight on the future of high performance computing and the challenges faced by institutions as the demand for HPC…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Jacquard Loom
Well I don't agree with the premise, it did not rival the brain. But the Jacquard loom did make us think about automating and 'programming' difficult process. So a legitimate part of computing history: In the CACM:
A Computer…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Using Cyberattack for Defense
These days, it's rare that we learn something new from the Snowden documents. But Ben Buchanan found something interesting. The NSA penetrates enemy networks in order to enhance our defensive capabilities. The data the NSA collected…
From The Noisy Channel
Martin, I don’t envy you the challenge of trying to improve search for clients who value search…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Skills for Small Business
Instructive list that I have been waiting for. How can we get practical with voice skill assistants? Examining.
23 Must-Have Alexa Skills for Your Small Business By Rob Marvin in PCMag.
Amazon's digital assistant Alexa can help…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Taxing Robots at Human Rates
In an interview with Bill Gates, the suggestion that robots that take human jobs should pay taxes:
“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social…