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 The Eponymous Pickle
Supply Chain Numbers
This is published monthly, emphasizes the quant of supply chains, with further expert explanation of causal events and trends. I often used this as a starting point for talks to the enterprise on supply chain trends.
In SupplychainDigest…
From insideHPC
HudsonAlpha to host BioTech Hackathon in Huntsville
The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology will host the second HudsonAlpha Tech Challenge February 22-24, 2019. This life sciences hackathon brings together students and professionals who attempt to solve challenges using an…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Doug Kothe Looks back at the Exascale Computing Project Annual Meeting
In this podcast, Doug Kothe from the Exascale Computing Project describes the 2019 ECP Annual Meeting. "Key topics to be covered at the meeting are discussions of future systems, software stack plans, and interactions with facilities…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Algorithms Need a Sense of Uncertainty
In our early work in AI to implement expertise we always included what were called 'certainty' measures. Sometimes estimated with a crowd sourcing method, sometimes with statistics gathered or expert opinion. The resulting…
From BLOG@CACM
The Growing Tension Between Undergraduate and K-12: Is CS for All, or Just Those Who Get Past the Caps?
Are we repeating the 1980's? It's even worse now.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Galaxies Missing? No, we have Plenty
In Quanta. Some phenomenal Hubble pictures at the link. 100 Billion galaxies estimated and counting.
Missing Galaxies? Now There’s Too Many
Astronomers couldn’t find enough satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Now they
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Accenture Debuts RPA Platform
New to me, will be interesting to see how it can automate key elements of business process. RPA applications are continuing to expand. See the SynOps Site.
Accenture Debuts Platform That Automated 40,000 Roles By Jeremy Kahn…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Facial Reco Data Sets Tests Bias
An increasing number of 'test' datasets for key aspects of learning. If generally accepted, are a way to certify algorithms and associated processes.
IBM Facial Recognition Dataset Aims to Remove Gender, Skin Bias
Computer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Patents Surge
Huge Surge in AI Patent Applications in Past 5 Years
Financial Times By Clive Cookson
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has estimated that the past five years witnessed a major boom in artificial intelligence…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Lowes to Shut Down its Smart Home Ecosystem
Not unexpected given the competition. Continued development is likely to be very expensive. Better work closely with other assistant makers. Had seen their in store marketing and it was not competitive enough linking to other…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Strange Horizon
Data science of many things including citations Amazon India source Paul Allison is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and president of the company Statistical Horizons. They…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blockchain and Trust
Can trust have an architecture? in K@W:
How the Blockchain Ushers in a New Form of Trust
Wharton's Kevin Werbach provides an in-depth explanation of the blockchain, as presented in his new book.
Blockchain is one of the biggest…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Governments and AI
In McKinsey, thoughtful piece:
When governments turn to AI: Algorithms, trade-offs, and trust
Artificial intelligence can help government agencies solve complex public-sector problems. For those that are new at it, here are five…
From insideHPC
Podcast: China Tianhe-3 Exascale machine is coming
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team takes a second look at China’s plans for the Tianhe-3 exascale supercomputer. "According to news articles, Tianhe-3 will be 200 times faster than Tianhe-1, with 100x more storage. What…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Research Engineer at Reservoir Labs in New York
Reservoir Labs is seeking a Research Engineer in our Job of the Week. We are working on some of the most interesting and challenging problems related to high-performance computing and compilers, cybersecurity, advanced algorithms…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Classification and Regression Trees
Good piece about a favorite method, in part because its results and methods are easy to explain. Used it many times in the enterprise, even developed semi automated similar methods.
Classification and Regression Trees in DSC
Learn…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Letting AI Augment the Human Workplace
Nicely done, agree, though this will require new understanding of both humans and machines. A means of coordinating when each will think, assist and lead.
3 Ways How AI Will Augment the Human Workforce Posted by Ronald …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cisco on Privacy Framework
Worth of thinking these systems in terms of consistency, and connected to important processes.
Building an Effective Privacy Framework
By Eric Wenger in Cisco Blog
We are encouraged to see NIST building on the model of the highly…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
New Web host
Following my recent blogging problems, the majority advice I received was to move to a different host. My blog is now hosted by SiteGround. Moving my content over was far easier than I anticipated, so far. I am no longer using…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid with Chorizo, Tomato, and Beans
Nice recipe. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Infrastructure Monitoring
Hands free, clear place for monitoring applications in the smart city.
Swarms of drones will soon keep tabs on our aging city infrastructure By Luke Dorme in Digitaltrends
When it comes to the future commercial applications of…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Web caching: what is the right time-to-live for cached pages?
I have been having performance problems with my blog and this forced me to spend time digging into the issue. Some friends of mine advocate that I should just “pay someone” and they are no doubt right that it would be the economical…
From insideHPC
Why HPC Cloud is your Competitive Advantage
In this special guest post, Thomas Francis writes that the Cloud is stepping up to answer the computational challenges of Ai and HPC. "Cloud delivers cost savings and efficiencies which are nice to have. But the reason companies…
From insideHPC
Video: Performance and Productivity in the Big Data Era
In this video from the Intel User Forum at SC18, Prabhat from NERSC presents: Performance and Productivity in the Big Data Era. "At the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, HPC and AI converge and advance with…
From Schneier on Security
Public-Interest Tech at the RSA Conference
Our work in cybersecurity is inexorably intertwined with public policy and -- more generally -- the public interest. It's obvious in the debates on encryption and vulnerability disclosure, but it's also part of the policy discussions…
From Mostafa Dehghani
Learning to Transform, Combine, and Reason in Open-Domain Question Answering
Our paper "Learning to Transform, Combine, and Reason in Open-Domain Question Answering", with Hosein Azarbonyad, Jaap Kamps, and Maarten de Rijke, has been accepted as a long paper at 12th ACM International Conference on Web…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Agriculture and Technology
In ACM. Good overview of the remarkable work underway and opportunities for Tech and agriculture
Technologizing Agriculture By Keith Kirkpatrick
Communications of the ACM, February 2019, Vol. 62 No. 2, Pages 14-16
10.1145/3297805…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Looking for Patterns in Neurons
Fascinating after-training analysis of how neurons capture specifics. Deep research and technical, but perhaps a way to squeeze new kinds of information from Deep Learning. Beyond analytics to embedded knowledge? Good
Putting…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What is a variable and why is it so hard to understand?
Variables in computer science are complicated. No, really they are. I didn’t consciously realize how complicated until I read “What is a variable?” on the blog at CACM. Reading that article, which was not an easy read for me…