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 insideHPC
Call for Papers: International Workshop on In Situ Visualization
The 3rd International Workshop on In Situ Visualization has issued it's Call for Papers. Held in conjunction with ISC 2018, WOIV 2018 takes place June 28 in Frankfurt, Germany. "Our goal is to appeal to a wide-ranging audience…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
RFI on Integration of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) into the Highway Transportation System
The US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Transportation System has released a Request for Information on Integration of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) into the Highway Transportation System. Responses are due February…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Full Scale Virtual Research
" ... Please share with your colleagues…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Open Source AI
What Facebook is Doing for Open-Source AI. Technical details and detailed pointers to resources. Announces what they call Tensor Comprehensions.
Announcing Tensor Comprehensions
By: Nicolas Vasilache, Oleksandr Zinenko - Inria…
From insideHPC
PASC18 Keynote to Focus on Extreme-Scale Multi-Physics Earthquake Simulations
Today the PASC18 conference announced that Alice-Agnes Gabriel from Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich will deliver a keynote address on earthquake simulation. " This talk will focus on using physics-based scenarios, modern…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Jumanji and the While Loop
Cultural references (term used loosely) can make projects and exercises more interesting for students. Now that there is an updated version of the movie Jumanji out I decided to use that reference again for working with while…
From insideHPC
Video: Intel and NVIDIA at Congressional Hearing on Artificial Intelligence
In this video, Information Technology Subcommittee Chairman Will Hurd begins a three-part hearing on Artificial Intelligence. "Over the next three months, the IT Subcommittee will hear from industry professionals such as Intel…
From insideHPC
Updating the SC18 Technical Program to Inspire the Future
In this special guest feature, SC18 Technical Program Chair David Keyes from KAUST writes that important changes are coming to the world's biggest HPC conference this November in Dallas.
The post Updating the SC18 Technical Program…
From insideHPC
Buying for Tomorrow: HPC Systems Procurement Matters
Ingrid Barcena from KU Leuven gave this talk at the HPC Knowledge Portal meeting in San Sebastián, Spain. "One of the biggest challenges when procuring High Performance Computing systems is to ensure that not only a faster machine…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The New Virtual Office
I took several looks at this topic as part of our innovation center work. Some of the capabilities I looked at still exist, see for example, what was once called Qwaq or "Immersive Terf". (tags on these efforts below). We
Step…
From Schneier on Security
Election Security
Good Washington Post op-ed on the need to use voter-verifiable paper ballots to secure elections, as well as risk-limiting audits....
From insideHPC
Flow Graph Analyzer – Speed Up Your Applications
Using the Intel® Advisor Flow Graph Analyzer (FGA), an application such as those that are needed for autonomous driving can be developed and implemented using very high performing underlying software and hardware. Under the Intel…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Introducing Smart Speakers
Fastcompany Says Facebook will introduce multiple Smart Speakers Unclear if there will be any remnants of the Facebook M assistant, reportedly dropped recently. We would assume it will integrate the Facebook software.
The social…
From Computational Complexity
Corporate Education
First of all read the #metoo testimonial going around the TCS blogosphere. Our field is not immune.
Last Sunday Frank Bruni wrote an op-ed column Corporations will Inherit the Earth, an article on how corporations have taken…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM-W Connections – February 2018
Letter from ACM-W Chair News from ACM-W Celebrations News from ACM-W Professional Chapters News from ACM-W Student Chapters News from ACM-W Europe Welcome from the ACM-W Chair In the February issue of Communications of the ACM…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Better Tools for Long-Term Crop Prediction
Researchers are using the Blue Waters supercomputer to create better tools for long-Term crop prediction. “We built this new tool to bridge these two types of crop models combining their strengths and eliminating the weaknesses…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Slack Using AI
So far have not been impressed with Slacks chatbot, but gives the impression that they are working on assisting the user. Especially useful for new or infrequent users. At first expected this to take the initiative more than…
From insideHPC
Binary Packaging for HPC with Spack
In this video from FOSDEM 2018 in Brussels, Todd Gamblin presents: Binary Packaging for HPC with Spack. Spack is a package manager for cluster users, developers, and administrators, rapidly gaining populartiy in the HPC community…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Community Consortium at AAAS 2018
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2018 Annual Meeting this weekend, February 15-19, 2018 in Austin, TX. CCC Executive Council Member…
From insideHPC
MIT helps move Neural Nets back to Analog
MIT researchers have developed a special-purpose chip that increases the speed of neural-network computations by three to seven times over its predecessors, while reducing power consumption 94 to 95 percent. "The computation
…
From insideHPC
HPC Processor Competition Heats Up
In this special guest feature, Robert Roe from Scientific Computing World explores efforts to diversify the HPC processor market. "With the arrival of Arm and now the reintroduction of AMD to HPC, there are signs of new life
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wharton Podcast on Amazon Go
Will Amazon Go Capture the Holy Grail of Retail?
Amazon’s new cashier-less convenience store aims to answer one of retail’s thorniest challenges: Understanding why shoppers do what they do, and leveraging that knowledge into increasing…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF DCL- President’s FY 2019 Budget Request for NSF
The following is a letter to the community from James Kurose, Assistant Director, and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Some Technical Tidbits
Tid-bit: delicacy, dainty, snack, nibble, appetizer, hors d’oeuvre, goody, dipper, finger food Adam Engst is the publisher of the site TidBITS. This is a site dedicated to technical insights about all aspects of Apple machines…
From XRDS
A world full of emojis
In 2010, a new trend emerged in electronic messages and web pages: emojis. There is an interesting journey behind these cute little images, and it is definitely worth to understand how and why they were initially created. Emojis…
From Schneier on Security
Can Consumers' Online Data Be Protected?
Everything online is hackable. This is true for Equifax's data and the federal Office of Personal Management's data, which was hacked in 2015. If information is on a computer connected to the Internet, it is vulnerable. But just…
From Writing
How we built a distributed, self-funded, family-friendly, profitable startup
We started Gruntwork in 2016 with two goals: (1) make it 10x easier to understand, build, and deploy software and (2) build a company where we can work on interesting projects, with interesting people, while leading interesting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Decentralized Identity with Blockchains
Intriguing application proposal. More at the link below, including a number of initial participants and goals.
Microsoft will use a Blockchain to Decentralize Data for better control By Kevin Parrish @exfileme
From The Eponymous Pickle
Voice Design, Voice Enablement
Good thoughts, have been thinking much about voice design of late and how it best integrates with other channels. Very useful in a new world of voice-enabled assistants.
The fundamentals of voice design by way of voice enabling…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Quotes About Programming and Computer Science
While looking for a quote that was mostly remembered except for who to credit with it I found a couple of fun sites with quote collections in them. Some of these I already share with students. I think I may print out some more…