Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2019
From insideHPC
Agenda Posted for Stanford HPC Conference Next Week
The HPC Ai Advisory Council has posted the Agenda for the Stanford HPC Conference. The event takes place Feb. 14-15 in Palo Alto. "Focused on contributing to making the world a better place, our only US-based conference draws…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nuance Project Pathfinder
Back to still the biggest problem for assistant AI. How do we create and manage context rich, memory enabled conversations between people and machines? Here the claim it is not best done by developing all possible scripts,…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
An Old But Cool Result
Solving a type of Fermat Equation Leo Moser was a mathematician who worked on a very varied set of problems. He for example raised a question about “worms,” and invented a notation for huge numbers. Today I want to talk about…
From The Eponymous Pickle
FBI Trying Amazon Face Matching Software from Amazon
Inevitable that such measures will be used by law enforcement and governments. Or it will only be being used by criminal organizations. Bias and privacy will have to be considered. What will the legal considerations for
The…
From Schneier on Security
Major Zcash Vulnerability Fixed
Zcash just fixed a vulnerability that would have allowed "infinite counterfeit" Zcash. Like all the other blockchain vulnerabilities and updates, this demonstrates the ridiculousness of the notion that code can replace people…
From The Eponymous Pickle
25 ways of Looking at AI
Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI in The Edge
Pre-Order Now (At the Edge Link)
Edited by John Brockman
"Intelligences born and intelligences made have a lot to offer each other. For that beneficial blend to occur, the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Wants to Search Blockchains
Searchability means being able to measure, understand and ultimately regulate what is going on inside a blockchain. Have talked to Washington regulatory compliance bureaucrats, and they are worried about blockchains. Google…
From insideHPC
The convergence of HPC and BigData: What does it mean for HPC sysadmins?
Damien Francois gave this talk at FOSDEM'19. "The world of HPC and the world of BigData are slowly, but surely, converging. The HPC world realizes that there are more to data storage than just files and that 'self-service' ideas…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Recap of the CCC’s Thermodynamic Computing Workshop
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently hosted a visioning workshop on Thermodynamic Computing in Honolulu, Hawaii in order to establish a community of like-minded visionaries; craft a statement of research needs; and…
From insideHPC
EGI Federation Reaches 1,000,000 Cores
Today the European EGI Federation announced that it has reached 1,000,000 million cores of high-throughput compute capacity for research. Headquartered in the Netherlands, EGI is a federation of almost 300 data centers worldwide…
From insideHPC
RAID Inc. Becomes Preferred Lustre Reseller for DDN Whamcloud
Today DDN announced that RAID Inc. has been named a preferred reseller of DDN’s distribution of Lustre. "As the primary developer, maintainer and technical support provider for Lustre software, DDN implements solutions for extreme…
From insideHPC
Atos to Deploy Quantum Learning Machine at STFC Hartree Centre
Today Atos announced that the Hartree Centre will soon become the home of the first Atos Quantum Learning Machine in the UK. "We’re thrilled to be enabling UK companies to explore and prepare for the future of quantum computing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facial Recognition for Pharma Convenience
We tested the idea of putting up different marketing messages depending on observed age/gender/demographic/weather , etc . Which appears to be similar to this Walgreens test. So a person is not identified, but rather their…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IKEA to Save the Smart Home
Am a long time follower and customer of IKEA. And in particular how they have used technology in marketing and supply chain. Studied their use of augmented reality. Now they appear to be pushing the smart home, the following…
From The Eponymous Pickle
McCormick and IBM Work on New Spice Blends
We also worked on blending for tastes, new and old. Using AI and expert systems methods. With multiple consumer preference, manufacturing and supply chain goals. Notably for years in the coffee industry, but also later in other…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Most People Overlook AI Despite Flawless Advice
Implications for humans working with AI assistants?
Most People Overlook AI Despite Flawless Advice
U.S. Army Research Laboratory
U.S. Army researchers and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara have found a
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Edge Digital Shelves Found Influential
More on recent Kroger work in Digital Shelves, in Progressive Grocer. Still on my list to visit these stores.
Test Shoppers Find Kroger's New Digital Shelves 'Influential' on Purchase Decisions
"... A test using eight secret shoppers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Determining if Superbowl Ads Behaviorally Compelling
During our neuromarketing experiments we analyzed how ads worked to influence people to buy. Here ImmersionNeuro has new ideas on how they operate. Check out their site for current ads.
Exclusive: Your brain is lying to you…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to Keynote World’s Premier AI Conference
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver the opening keynote address at the 10th annual GPU Technology Conference, being held March 17-21, in San Jose, Calif. "If you’re interested in AI, there’s no better place in the…
From insideHPC
Video: TensorFlow for HPC?
In this podcast, Peter Braam looks at how TensorFlow framework could be used to accelerate high performance computing. "Google has developed TensorFlow, a truly complete platform for ML. The performance of the platform is amazing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI and Industrial IoT
Nice overview example, similar things happening at GE.
AI Transforms Industrial IoT Posted by Ronald van Loon from DSC
If you’ve been studying artificial intelligence and its growth, you’ll know that the industry is well past…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pallative Care Decisions via a Control Tower
I have mentees at University of Florida Industrial and Systems Engineering, where I did work building simulations linked to optimization of complex health systems and processes, such as operating rooms. Interesting description…
From Schneier on Security
Facebook's New Privacy Hires
The Wired headline sums it up nicely -- "Facebook Hires Up Three of Its Biggest Privacy Critics": In December, Facebook hired Nathan White away from the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, and put him in the role of privacy…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bio of Claude Shannon
Reading about some of Shannon's work inspired me, and saw it applied in the enterprise in novel and AI related ways. Interesting too, t his says the book is about the process of genius, but just being a genius. Like that idea…
From insideHPC
Video: The Quest for the Highest Performance – Supporting Science with SuperMUC-NG
Prof. Dr. Dieter Kranzlmüller from the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Germany gave this talk at the Intel User Forum. "The next generation of supercomputing has arrived at LRZ with SuperMUC-NG. Learn how LRZ scientists…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Launches the “Catalyzing Computing” Podcast
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is launching the “Catalyzing Computing” podcast, which will focus on topics of interests within the computing research community. The podcast is hosted by CCC Program Associate Khari Douglas…
From insideHPC
High Performance Embedded Computing
SkyScale's Tim Miller contends that the recent combination of One Stop Systems and Bressner create an ideal European ‘AI on the Fly’ embedded HPC partner for OEMs addressing the growing HPC at the Edge and HPC on the move markets…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Supply and Demand in Computer Science Education
We have a supply and demand problem in computer science education. Demand has never been higher and it is growing. The need is real. Take a look at We need as many Computer Science minors as we need Computer Science majors.@dougbergmanUSA…
From Computational Complexity
Don't know Football but still want bet on the Superb Owl?
(Suberp Owl is not a typo. I've heard (and it could be wrong) that the NFL guards their copyright so you can't even say `Buy Beer here for the YOU KNOW WHATl' but instead `Buy Beer here for the big game''. Stephen Colbert a…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (February 3rd, 2019)
A Canadian startup built around electric taxis failed. One of their core findings is that electric cars must be recharged several times a day, especially during the winter months. Evidently, the need to constantly recharge the…