Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2018
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computers Too Human
Saw some of this in our own chatbot testing. Also famously mentioned in studies of how people react to obviously non-human images in chat interactions, like in the Media Equation. Is the testing of this idea reasonably
Sometimes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Noise Robust Classifiers
May also provide better ways to understand how classifiers can be tested in varying environments. Do not various contexts have likely kinds of adversarial noise? In the areas I have worked with, that is true, in some cases…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Assistant to go more Multilingual
Given Google's considerable expertise in the space this could lead to some remarkable capabilities, see suggestions below and at link. Here more about adding 20 languages, plus more on other advances planned for Google Assistant…
From insideHPC
Altair to boost UNLV Supercomputing
Today UNLV announced new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the university and Altair Engineering. "Per the agreement, Altair’s technology will enable Cherry Creek II users to simplify access and utilization of the supercomputer…
From insideHPC
Rigetti Computing Releases Forest 1.3 Quantum Software Platform
Rigetti Computing has released a new version of Forest, their quantum software platform. Forest 1.3 offers upgraded developer tools, improved stability, and faster execution. "Starting today, researchers using Forest will be
…
From insideHPC
D-Wave Completes Prototype of Next-Gen Quantum Processor
Today D-Wave Systems announced that the company has completed fabrication and testing of a working prototype next-generation processor, and the installation of a D-Wave 2000Q system for a customer. The prototype processor uses…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Accessibility and Computer Science
I’ve been following, as much as one can, the SIGCSE conference via Twitter this week. One of the comments I read talked about how many places don’t teach accessibility because they don’t see it as part of computer science. ICS…
From insideHPC
Highest Peformance and Scalability for HPC and AI
Scot Schultz from Mellanox gave this talk at the Stanford HPC Conference. "Today, many agree that the next wave of disruptive technology blurring the lines between the digital, physical and even the biological, will be the fourth…
From Schneier on Security
Election Security
I joined a letter supporting the Secure Elections Act (S. 2261): The Secure Elections Act strikes a careful balance between state and federal action to secure American voting systems. The measure authorizes appropriation of grants…
From Universal Acceptance Steering Group
Microsoft announcement of EAI in India
Today, International Mother Language Day, we announced support for EAI in Office 365 and Outlook.com. We are focusing on Outlook and webmail for now, though we will follow up regarding other mail clients soon. Likewise we are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Expands Bot Framework
Was impressed when I saw a demo of Azure being used to build simple chatbots. I thought then that it is about what services such systems could work with and their related data. So why can't these frameworks work with Outlook…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence
Below is from the talk mentioned above from our Linked Cognitive Systems Group. Join us in future talks, many will be mentioned here.
Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence by Dr. Vugranam (VC) Sreedhar
Abstract: In this talk…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Time Inconsistent Planning
Could such a method be used to plug into process models to include planning functions?
Time-Inconsistent Planning: A Computational Problem in Behavioral Economics By Jon Kleinberg, Sigal Oren
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 61…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Can We Trust a Robot?
From Communications of the ACM:
How Can We Trust a Robot?" by Benjamin Kuipers, says robots must be designed to understand and follow social norms. Kuipers describes the importance of instilling trust and ethics into robots…
From insideHPC
Warm Water-Cooling enables a fanless design for new Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650
Today Lenovo unveiled the new ThinkSystem SD650 server Direct Water Cooling for energy-efficient, high-density computing. Already deployed at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Germany, the ThinkSystem SD650 will save customers…
From insideHPC
Lenovo ThinkSystem Servers Power 1.3 Petaflop Supercomputer at University of Southampton
OCF in the UK has deployed a new supercomputer at the University of Southampton. Named Iridis 5, the 1.3 Petaflop system will support research demanding traditional HPC as well as projects requiring large scale deep storage,
…
From insideHPC
Designing HPC, Deep Learning, and Cloud Middleware for Exascale Systems
DK Panda from Ohio State University gave this talk at the Stanford HPC Conference. "This talk will focus on challenges in designing HPC, Deep Learning, and HPC Cloud middleware for Exascale systems with millions of processors…
From insideHPC
Intel MKL Compact Matrix Functions Attain Significant Speedups
The latest version of Intel® Math Kernel Library (MKL) offers vectorized compact functions for general and specialized matrix computations of this type. These functions rely on true SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) matrix…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Modeling Good Coding Practice
Facebook showed me this cartoon this morning.
From Computational Complexity
NP is Hard
You don't get much press by stating conventional beliefs--there is no "round earth society". Nevertheless there are serious researchers out there trying to say that it is reasonably possible if not likely that P = NP. Don't believe…
From Schneier on Security
Harassment By Package Delivery
People harassing women by delivering anonymous packages purchased from Amazon. On the one hand, there is nothing new here. This could have happened decades ago, pre-Internet. But the Internet makes this easier, and the article…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Georgia Tech Tests Assistants in Dorms
Like to see not only what is being done, but what skills are seen as being most useful in varying contexts, here in a Georgia Tech dorm, a university known for practical engineering. Worked with them on Tech applications. Can…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmented Reality Glasses to Transform Vision
The emphasis on vision correction in context is interesting.
DARPA Awards $4.7 Million Grant to Transform Augmented-Reality Glasses
Military Embedded Systems By Lisa Daigle
Researchers at Columbia University, Stanford University…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Protecting Deliveries
More details from the world of direct to home delivery. A Smart Home then needs to consider the and ensure the security of its acquisitions.
Are smart homes smart enough to foil package thieves? by Tom Ryan in Retailwire, with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon, Whole Foods and Prime
Amazon improves connections between their online Prime buying club benefits and their brick and mortar acquisitions. Whole Food 5% discount with Amazon Rewards Visa. In the coming weeks I will be testing their 2 hour online…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Malicious Use of AI
Non technical, overview look at where we need
AI ripe for exploitation, experts warn By Jane Wakefield in the BBC
Drones turned into missiles, fake videos manipulating public opinion and automated hacking are just three of the…
From insideHPC
State of Linux Containers
Christian Kniep from Docker Inc. gave this talk at the Stanford HPC Conference. "This talk will recap the history of and what constitutes Linux Containers, before laying out how the technology is employed by various engines and…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Open Letter to People at #SIGCSE2018
The Annual SIGCSE Technical Symposium is taking place in Baltimore this week. Some of the best minds in computer science education are sharing ideas in sessions, panels, birds of a feather, and hallway conversations. At theNow…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Programming Patterns For Beginners
Ever since I read those papers on the Rainfall program (How Hard Is That Programming Problem?) I’ve been thinking about patterns in problem solving and programming. There are many of these types of patterns in programming but…
From insideHPC
Samsung Unveils 30.72TB Enterprise SSD
Today Samsung announced that it has begun mass producing the industry’s largest capacity SAS solid state drive – the PM1643 – for use in next-generation enterprise storage systems. Leveraging Samsung’s latest V-NAND technology…