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 Computational Complexity
Raymond Smullyan: Logician, Recreational math writer, Philosopher, passed away
Raymond Smullyan was born on May 25 1919 and passed away recently at the age of 97. He was a logician (PhD from Princeton under Alonzo Church in 1959) who did serious, recreational, and philosophical work. I doubt he invented…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Systems Communicating with Humans
Intriguing steps forward, ultimately about learning and updating the state of interactions. Consider too the mention of trust, and implications of deeper agency between bots, assistants and their human users.
AI Systems Are Learning…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Nanotechnology-Inspired Information Processing Systems Workshop Report
The organizing committee for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Nanotechnology-Inspired Information Processing Systems has released their workshop report. The workshop, held in September 2016, brought together…
From insideHPC
ORNL’s Al Geist to Keynote OpenFabrics Workshop in Austin
In his keynote, Mr. Geist will discuss the need for future Department of Energy supercomputers to solve emerging data science and machine learning problems in addition to running traditional modeling and simulation applications…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Call for Proposals: Creating Visions for Computing Research
The mission of Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community and enable the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research. CCC conducts activities that…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Demos 4X Improvement in Crypto Performance with 40G Ethernet Network Adapter
Today Mellanox announced superior crypto throughput of line rate using the company’s Innova IPsec Network Adapter, demonstrating more than three times higher throughput and more than four times better CPU utilization when compared…
From insideHPC
Designing HPC & Deep Learning Middleware for Exascale Systems
DK Panda from Ohio State University presented this deck at the 2017 HPC Advisory Council Stanford Conference. "This talk will focus on challenges in designing runtime environments for exascale systems with millions of processors…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at the Posit and Next Generation Computer Arithmetic
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses a recent presentation by John Gustafson on Next Generation Computer Arithmetic. “A new data type called a “posit” is designed for direct drop-in replacement for IEEE Standard…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smell and VR
Had seen related efforts demonstrated, but they suffered from most smell applications that made it difficult to focus and then remove aromas in spaces like retail.
Stop to smell the virtual roses: why scent could be the next…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Jewelry
Beyond Smart watches.
Berkshire Hathaway jumps into wearables with a smart jewelry line
As consumers spend more on technology and less on jewelry, the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary the Richline Group is looking to capitalize on…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Back
There's a really interesting paper from George Washington University on hacking back: "Into the Gray Zone: The Private Sector and Active Defense against Cyber Threats." I've never been a fan of hacking back. There's a reason…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Reality is Transforming Healthcare
Intriguing, but I have yet to see it in operation in any health care setting and I have seen many. Looking for a realistic example.
How Virtual Reality is Transforming Healthcare
Healthcare is one of the hottest industries where…
From insideHPC
Call for Participation: PEARC17 in New Orleans
The PEARC17 Conference has issued its Call for Participation. Formerly known as the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) annual conference, PEARC17 will take place July 9-13 in New Orleans. "The Technical…
From insideHPC
Video: State of Linux Containers
"Linux Containers gain more and more momentum in all IT ecosystems. This talk provides an overview about what happened in the container landscape (in particular Docker) during the course of the last year and how it impacts datacenter…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Danger of Devices like Alexa to Security
Have been a user and experimenter with Alexa, Google Home and Cortana since their introduction. Been asked about privacy implications. Agency thoughts were recently brought to my attention for assistants in generally. Excerpt…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Driverless Trucks Leads to Need for More Drivers?
In Supply Chain Digest, some unexpected indications?
Why Driverless Trucks May Create the Need for More Drivers
Less Expensive Transportation may Lead to More Local Warehouses That Offer Same day Delivery and More Direct Customer…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Global Technology Policy Newsletter – February 2017
ACM PUBLIC POLICY HIGHLIGHTS ACM seeks to educate policymakers, the computing community, and the public about policies that will that foster and accelerate innovations in computing, computing education, and related disciplines…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Estimating Age with AI
In the Verge: Estimating age from images: " ... Amazon’s latest artificial intelligence tool is a piece of image recognition software that can learn to guess a human’s age. The feature is powered by Amazon’s Rekognition platform…
From insideHPC
Intel Rolls Out BigDL Deep Learning Library for Apache Spark
Today Intel announced the open-source BigDL, a Distributed Deep Learning Library for the Apache Spark* open-source cluster-computing framework. “BigDL is an open-source project, and we encourage all developers to connect with…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Research Systems and Application Administrator at University of Oregon
"The University of Oregon (UO) High Performance Computing Research Core Facility (HPCRCF) seeks experienced applicants for the position of Research Systems and Application Administrator. The HPCRCF is a new facility located on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Consults on Your Smart Home
Amazon offers to consult on setting up your smart home. In Retailwire.
" ... Amazon.com has rolled out a new service on the West Coast, which offers free in-home consultations for customers interested in smart home technology…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Communication through Skin Patterns
Interesting research. (Popular article here.) As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From The Eponymous Pickle
How an AI Won at Poker
In Engadget: How the AI won in a game with very high uncertainty. Intriguing with lots of detail. How might this be carried over to the business operations world? How is risk linked to that uncertainty? How is it similar…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Target Cuts Back on Innovation
Target shelves robot store and secret e-commerce start-up by George Anderson, In Retailwire:
Target is cutting back on its innovation project plans to concentrate more on its core business operations after coming off a holiday…
From The Noisy Channel
Lots of good stuff in there.
Of course, the most annoying thing is an unexpected, unsolicited phone call. Once I’ve determined that it’s a legitimate aggressive sales…
From insideHPC
Global HPC Centers Form Accelerated Computing Institute
Leaders in hybrid accelerated HPC in the United States, Japan, and Switzerland have signed a memorandum of understanding establishing an international institute dedicated to common goals, the sharing of HPC expertise, and forward…
From Schneier on Security
CSIS's Cybersecurity Agenda
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published "From Awareness to Action: A Cybersecurity Agenda for the 45th President" (press release here). There's a lot I agree with -- and some things I don't -- but…
From insideHPC
Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions Group Teams with Bright Computing
"We are very excited to be working closely with Bright Computing to bring its supercomputing software tools to the embedded Aerospace & Defense market as part of our OpenHPEC Accelerator Suite software development toolset,” said…
From insideHPC
Shahin Khan Presents: Hot Technology Topics in 2017
Shahin Khan from OrionX presented this talk at the Stanford HPC Conference. "From BitCoins and AltCoins to Design Thinking, Autonomous tech and the changing nature of jobs, IoT and cyber risk, and the impact of application architecture…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI's Cooperating
Perhaps the most important question of all, both in the relatively simplistic sense of assistants cooperating with us, and the much deeper sense of working together. Both considerable challenges. Recall our look at approaches…