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
Baidu Launches Blockchain with Smart Contracts
Quite intriguing notion of what this is, and the method by which it reaches consensus. The Smart Contract or DDE (decentralized application) would appear to be a generalized template approach that could implement agreements…
From The Eponymous Pickle
JP Morgan Declares a Cryptocurrency?
In what seemed like a considerable endorsement, of the kind that puts your money where your hype may be, JP Morgan yesterday declared it was setting up to test its own cryptocurrency, called a JPM Coin. Or did it? MIT Tech…
From insideHPC
EuroHPC Takes First Steps Towards Exascale
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has launched its first calls for expressions of interest, to select the sites that will host the Joint Undertaking’s first supercomputers (petascale and precursor…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Modernizing the Electric Grid with HPC
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at how Lawrence Livermore National Lab is working to simulate and help modernize the electric grid. They discuss how the ‘new grid’ will need to be two-way, both delivering and accepting…
From insideHPC
HPC Boosts Art and Design at Virginia Tech
Students at Virginia Tech are using HPC for their creative work to build robust project portfolios. "The School of Visual Arts in Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies offers an advanced rendering class for…
From insideHPC
Exascale Computing Project updates Extreme-Scale Scientific Software Stack
Exascale computing is only a few years away. Today the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) put out the second release of their Extreme-Scale Scientific Software Stack. The E4S Release 0.2 includes a subset of ECP ST software products…
From insideHPC
XTREME-Stargate: The New Era of HPC Cloud Platforms
In this video from the 2019 Stanford HPC Conference, Naoki Shibata from XTREME-D presents: XTREME-Stargate: The New Era of HPC Cloud Platforms. "XTREME-D is an award-winning, funded Japanese startup whose mission is to make HPC…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Knowledge Graphs and Governance Webinar
Will be attending. Ultimately a crucial next step for AI and integration of Semantic data with enterprise data and metadata.
From TopQuadrant:
Join us for a webinar on February 21, 2019 at 11:30 AM ET.
Why are knowledge graphs…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Edge AI
Being able to process AI functions on the 'Edge', will make it increasingly useful and visible. Some details about the challenge.
Exploring Artificial Intelligence at the Edge By Bruce Kornfeld in DataNami
As the adoption of
Edge…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Resolution Limits for Image Analysis
Brought to my attention for a particular healthcare application. Technical. Comments?
Resolution limit of image analysis algorithms
By Edward A. K. Cohen, Anish V. Abraham, Sreevidhya Ramakrishnan & Raimund J. Ober in Nature…
From Schneier on Security
Reconstructing SIGSALY
Lessons learned in reconstructing the World War II-era SIGSALY voice encryption system....
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Minecraft Curriculum for Teaching Computer Science
I'm not a Minecraft person. I've had the demos. I know that some kids really get into it but … Well, some teachers love it as much as the students. For them it’s probably a great thing if there was some curriculum to use with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Interpreter Mode on Google Home
Have now been using bilingual mode on a Google Home for some time. It works well, even picks up many expressions on the edge of slang. Now I see in the following article that you can turn on a translator mode, whether you…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM-W Connections–February 2019
Letter from ACM-W Chair News from ACM-W Celebrations News from ACM-W Student Chapters News from ACM-W Professional Chapters News from ACM-W Scholarships News from ACM-W Europe A big “Thank You!” to those who participated in the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blockchains From a Distributed Computing Perspective
The underlying idea of blockchains is not new, and this paper makes the point. An introduction to those who want to understand its relationship to other forms of computational distributed architecture. Thoughtful, not overly…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Being Recognized Everywhere
Good piece about this Another example of the implications of the inevitable. Voice, not as often mentioned is also a dimension of this.
Being Recognized Everywhere By Logan Kugler
Communications of the ACM, February 2019…
From insideHPC
Interview: Why HPC is the Right Tool for Physics
Over at the SC19 Blog, Charity Plata continues the HPC is Now series of interviews with Enrico Rinaldi, a physicist and special postdoctoral fellow with the Riken BNL Research Center. This month, Rinaldi discusses why HPC is
…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
US Department of Education Needs CS Experts as Reviewers
I recieved this from Pat Yongpradit of Code.org and thought I should share it.
The US Department of Education has announced the EIR grant competition for FY 2019. This year EIR incorporates an exclusive priority for computer science…From The Eponymous Pickle
Vuzix Smart Glasses Again
Been intriqued by this, mentioned it several times, for a couple of years now, especially how it claims to eventually integrate with assistant systems like Alexa. Would like to see that and how it extends the interface. Engadget…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Community Consortium at AAAS 2019
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2019 Annual Meeting this weekend, February 14-17, 2019 in Washington, DC. CCC Executive Council…
From insideHPC
Gordon Bell Prize Highlights the Impact of Ai
In this special guest feature from Scientific Computing World, Robert Roe reports on the Gordon Bell Prize finalists for 2018. "The finalist’s research ranges from AI to mixed precision workloads, with some taking advantage of…
From insideHPC
The Inaugural Singularity User Group Meeting: Registration Open Now
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and Sylabs have teamed up to bring the Community its first ever meeting of the Singularity User Group (SUG). Singularity has become what it is today through the engagement of users, developers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Doing Pre Data Science
Nicely put piece, that I have passed it along before to others, worth considering again. Especially good as it includes the business parts more explicitly than you typically. Prework is a good idea. But also make sure
How…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
My iPad Pro experiment: almost two years later
Soon after the first iPad Pro came out, I bought one and started using it daily. The experiment is ongoing and I thought it was time to reflect upon it further. Before I begin, I need to clarify my goals. When I started thisContinue…
From insideHPC
Custom Atos Supercomputer to Speed Genome Analysis at CNAG-CRG in Barcelona
Atos will soon deploy a Bull supercomputer at the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) in Barcelona for large-scale DNA sequencing and analysis. To support the vast process and calculation demands needed for this analysis…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Pay Launching
Seems like a very late launch, Kroger is linking its loyalty card with smartphone based systems. Starting in Columbus Ohio. From the Kroger company:
Kroger Pay FAQs
What is Kroger Pay?
Kroger Pay is a new, fast, safe way to pay…
From Schneier on Security
USB Cable with Embedded Wi-Fi Controller
It's only a prototype, but this USB cable has an embedded Wi-Fi controller. Whoever controls that Wi-Fi connection can remotely execute commands on the attached computer....
From Computational Complexity
The iPhonification of Everything
So you've got an iPhone XS in Space Grey. Congrats, so do 20 million other people. Maybe you have different cases but otherwise the hardware in all these phones are virtually identical. Yet you can tell with a glance that this…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bring them Back to the Store?
More players in the space.
Retail Technology Aims to Bring Customers Back to the Store
United Press International
By Nicholas Sakelaris in UPI
Two startups, Pensa Systems and Birdzi—both portfolio companies of venture firm RevTech…
From insideHPC
GigaIO Technology Boosts Performance at the SC18 Student Cluster Competition
Today GigaIO, announced that that the company's new FabreX product was successfully used in the Student Cluster Competition at SC18. Students from the University of Warsaw incorporated GigaIO’s alpha product into their self-designed…