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 The Eponymous Pickle
Video Pattern Magnification
Quite interesting, technical.
Eulerian Video Magnification and Analysis
By Neal Wadhwa, Hao-Yu Wu, Abe Davis, Michael Rubinstein, Eugene Shih, Gautham J. Mysore, Justin G. Chen, Oral Buyukozturk, John V. Guttag, William T. Freeman…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Game Theory in Practice
A apace we worked in, especially to understand and react to models of competitive activity. In practice usually means getting good understanding of how these models work with available data.
In the Economist (May require subscription)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mining Brain Activity
A machine driven look at brain activity.
Brain Activity Is Too Complicated for Humans to Decipher. Machines Can Decode It for Us
By Vox
University of California, Berkeley professor Jack Gallant and others are using machine learning…
From Schneier on Security
Predicting a Slot Machine's PRNG
Wired is reporting on a new slot machine hack. A Russian group has reverse-engineered a particular brand of slot machine -- from Austrian company Novomatic -- and can simulate and predict the pseudo-random number generator. The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bots are Coming
Fun history and thoughts of our attempts as bot, past and presesent. I agree, things will be very different. How much will they be models of ourselves? How soon is unclear. In the Atlantic:
Our Bots, Ourselves
How the descendants…
From insideHPC
Video: Singularity – Containers for Science, Reproducibility, and HPC
"Explore how Singularity liberates non-privileged users and host resources (such as interconnects, resource managers, file systems, accelerators ...) allowing users to take full control to set-up and run in their native environments…
From Schneier on Security
Profile of Citizen Lab and Ron Diebert
Here's a nice profile of Citizen Lab and its director, Ron Diebert. Citizen Lab is a jewel. There should be more of them....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mr Clean's New Backstory
My colleague Larry Paul points me to a new backstory of Mr Clean brand equity character published for the Superbowl ad. This is amusingly far different from the backstory we used when we worked on the brand (See below for more…
From insideHPC
Dr. Peter Bauer from ECMWF to Keynote ISC 2017
Today ISC 2017 announced that their Tuesday keynote will be delivered by Dr. Peter Bauer from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). As Deputy Director of the Research Department Center at ECMWF, Dr.
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple, IBM and AI for the Enterprise
Following, the details will be interesting, especially for enterprise applications. Have seen relatively few AI driven applications in the enterprise. As part of a team that looked at well focused and valued applications…
From insideHPC
Apply Now for the SC17 Student Cluster Competition
Team applications are now being accepted for the SC17 Student Cluster Competition. "SC17 is excited to hold another nail-biting Student Cluster Competition, or SCC, now in its eleventh year, as an opportunity to showcase student…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Request for Input on Federal Datasets with Potential to Advance Data Science
National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for the Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) James Kurose has issued the following letter to the community to request input on federal datasets…
From Schneier on Security
Cryptkeeper Bug
The Linux encryption app Cryptkeeper has a rather stunning security bug: the single-character decryption key "p" decrypts everything: The flawed version is in Debian 9 (Stretch), currently in testing, but not in Debian 8 (Jessie)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamification and Sales Effectiveness
From Bunchball, who we talked to, of interest, requires registration:
Using Gamification to Optimize Sales Effectiveness
Every company's survival depends on the effectiveness of its sales force, whether those teams are direct,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Signing on for Alexa Data
In AdAge:
Epsilon and Others Scramble for Alexa Data from Amazon By Kate Kaye
Amazon, not unlike other retail giants or the web's walled gardens, is notoriously stingy with its data. However, Amazon has opened up some high-level…
From insideHPC
Kathy Yelick Joins Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame
Kathy Yelick, the Associate Lab Director for Computing Sciences at LBNL, has been named to the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame for her leadership in science, technology and engineering. Twelve women, each representing a different…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procter Call to Digital Ad Economy
In Adage:
Will P&G's Forceful Call to Arms Reform the Digital Ad Economy? By Nat Ives
Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard has unleashed a broadside against the way things are done in digital advertising. "The
P&G…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Senior System Administrator for HPC at WHOI Institute
The WHOI Information Services Department is looking for a Senior Systems Administrator to join their team. This is a regular, full-time position, and is eligible for benefits. The Senior Systems Administrator works within the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Managing With Immature AI
Good thoughts here, it is not mature yet. Yet still has value to pursue. Not quite enough shown about how and with which suppliers.
In MIT Sloan, may require registration.
Managing With Immature AI by Sam Ransbotham
The current…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Research Implications of the Report from the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity
The following is a blog post from CCC Executive Council Member Ben Zorn from Microsoft Research. On December 1, 2016, the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity released its comprehensive report containing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tell me a Story
Data visualization expert Stephen Few makes a point I have made for a long time. And does not take it far enough. Telling a story is great, powerful, expressive and convincing. So use that technique if you like. But storytelling…
From insideHPC
PRACE Posts Best Practice Guide for Intel Xeon Phi
The European PRACE initiative has published a new Best Practice Guide for Intel Xeon Phi, Knights Landing Edition. "This best practice guide provides information about Intel’s MIC architecture and programming models for the Intel…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Disruption Through Design
In UXMatters:
How IBM Is Embracing the Future Through Design
By Atul Handa and Kanupriya Vashisht February 6, 2017
IBM has chosen to create disruption through design. … We interviewed Karel Vredenburg, Director of IBM Design…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictions about AI Assistants
Some reasonable thoughts about near time directions. Who will really want to own the space? What will it take to do that? Deeper AI is still some time away, so near time, focused, lesser investments can get considerable results…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Ships 100,000+ Cables for Next-Gen 100 Gb/s Networks
Today Mellanox announced that it has shipped more than 100,000 units of its Direct Attach Copper Cables (DACs) to serve the growing demand of hyperscale Web 2.0 and cloud 100Gb/s networks.
The post Mellanox Ships 100,000+ Cables…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Sorting sorted arrays in Swift
Sorting arrays quickly is a classical computer science problem. It is also a common task worth optimizing. Sadly, there is no best approach, no silver bullet. Most people rely on whatever their programming language provides as…
From insideHPC
Supermicro Deploys 30,000+ MicroBlade Servers for 1.06 PUE Datacenter
A technology-leading Fortune 100 company has deployed over 30,000 Supermicro MicroBlade servers, at its Silicon Valley data center facility with a Power Use Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.06, to support the company’s growing compute…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA Rolls Out New Quadro Pascal GPUs
"Professional workflows are now infused with artificial intelligence, virtual reality and photorealism, creating new challenges for our most demanding users," said Bob Pette, vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at How Bosch Helped Volkswagen Cheat Emissions Tests
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at recent developments in the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal. According to reports, auto parts supplier Bosch wrote the software for VW that enabled the company's diesel vehicles
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mayfield Robotics
Now known for Bosch's effort with the beta Kuri home robot.
We Make Helpful Home Robots
Our robots bring joy to your house. Our small team of engineers, roboticists, and designers is growing quickly and we are having a great time…