Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2015
From insideHPC
IBM’s Dave Turek on the First Look at OpenPOWER Hardware for HPC
This week at the OpenPOWER Summit in San Jose, the OpenPOWER Foundation showed off real hardware for the first time with 13 systems including a a prototype HPC server from IBM and new microprocessor customized for China. Built…
From The Eponymous Pickle
TAG Heuer Competes with Apple Smart Watch
Not unexpected. Apple will sell many watches because it is Apple. Then It comes down to what the user experience will be like, which is where Google can provide value. Is it a techno fashion statement or a UX statementTAG…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Peek at University Watson
A good slideshare on what Watson is all about. From the RPI University perspective. See also the Cognitive Systems Institute for many additional university and research resources.
From insideHPC
Nvidia Showcases Deep Learning Technology
Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC), being held in San Jose California this week, showcased a combination of hardware and software aimed at driving the development of a branch of machine learning called 'deep learning'. …
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Wraps up the 2015 GPU Technology Conference
In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team wraps up the GPU Technology Conference. The theme of the show this year was Deep Learning, a topic that is heating up the market for GPUs with challenges like image recognition and self…
From ACM News
Battling Bias
A regional Grace Hopper Celebration event this week focused on "advancing a gender diverse technology workforce in New York."
From The Eponymous Pickle
Value and Risk of Data in Context. Open Group on Risk
Open Group on Data Risk. An notes on data asset/risk architecture.The broader task has been to look at both the VALUE and the RISK of data in CONTEXT Knowing that accurately would be very valuable. But further, it came to mind…
From Schneier on Security
Cisco Shipping Equipment to Fake Addresses to Foil NSA Interception
Last May, we learned that the NSA intercepts equipment being shipped around the world and installs eavesdropping implants. There were photos of NSA employees opening up a Cisco box. Cisco's CEO John Chambers personally complained…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thinfilm NFC Bottle Labels
The use of RFID to replace bar codes always run into the fact that packaging form is so variable. Here is an interesting example.in RFID Journal. " ... Printed electronics company Thin Film Electronics (Thinfilm) has announced…
From Schneier on Security
More Data and Goliath News
Right now, the book is #6 on the New York Times best-seller list in hardcover nonfiction, and #13 in combined print and e-book nonfiction. This is the March 22 list, and covers sales from the first week of March. The March 29…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Book: Marketing Research Using R
Had not seen a book yet that looked at marketing research problems using the analytics language R, This is written by a Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative (WCAI) fellow and colleague. Plan to get a copy.R for Marketing Research…
From insideHPC
Video: Tesla Model S Goes Driverless with Software Update
In this video, Tesla does a field test of a software update that will bring powerful auto-steering functionality to its Model S fleet.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering and Computer Science
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Engineering (ENG) and the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), have joined to support the Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Network Economics of Cybercrime and Data Assets
In Analytics Magazine: This connects with some of my recent work looking at data asset and risk value. Technical details at the link, reviewing.
" ... A new computer-based model examining cybercrimes adds an important way of…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Advnces in Facial Recognition
In Forbes: " .. Google: Our new system for recognizing faces is the best one ever ... Last week, a trio of Google ... researchers published a paper on a new artificial intelligence system dubbed FaceNet that it claims represents…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Alex Bouzari on How DDN Helps Customers Solve their Toughest Data Challenges
In this podcast, Michael Yorba from the Traders Network Radio Show interviews Alex Bouzari, Co-Founder & CEO of DataDirect Networks. Bouzari discusses how DDN helps customers solve their toughest problems.
From insideHPC
QCT to Develop First x86 Servers with Nvidia’s NVLink Interconnet
Today Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT) announced plans to build the first x86 CPU-based servers with Nvidia’s NVLink high-speed GPU interconnect technology. "NVLink unlocks the full potential of GPU accelerators by enabling CPUs…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Challenge of Cognitive Assistants for Knowledge Workers
Just attended a talk by Hamid R Motahari Nezhad of IBM Almaden, on Cognitive Work Assistants. His slides here. As part of the Cognitive Systems Institute series. This relates to the overall problem of how we will see AI at…
From insideHPC
Better Concurrency with HMB
Ocean modelling is complex from an algorithm standpoint and can require significant amounts of computing power to arrive at a simulation endpoint. However, many of the calculations that are contained in the simulation can be …
From Schneier on Security
Understanding the Organizational Failures of Terrorist Organizations
New research: Max Abrahms and Philip B.K. Potter, "Explaining Terrorism: Leadership Deficits and Militant Group Tactics," International Organizations. Abstract: Certain types of militant groups -- those suffering from leadership…
From insideHPC
Livestream: GTC Keynote on Deep Learning at Baidu at 11:00am PT
"Deep Learning has transformed many important tasks, including speech and image recognition. Deep Learning systems scale well by absorbing huge amounts of data to create accurate models. The computational resources afforded by…
From Computational Complexity
Feeling Underappreciated
As academics we live and die by our research. While our proofs are either correct or not, the import of our work has a far more subjective feel. One can see where the work is published or how many citations it gets and we often…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Machines Now Seen at Work
Good look at how machines replace people at work. Similar concerns were written about in the late 80s. Clearly AI will change how we work, the systems are augmenting and thus changing the nature of jobs and their component…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shopper Anonymity not Possible
In Retailwire: Good piece on how little information it takes to reveal an account. " ... A new study led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even with names and account numbers deletedThe…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Washington News – Alerts and Updates
* Congress continues to hold budget hearings. * The White House invites nominations for the National Medal of Science. The deadline is April 27. * The White House invites nominations for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Went Wrong with Glass?
Thoughts from a former Google exec. Will Microsoft's HoloLens learn from this experience? I still want a workable means to do augmented reality. I have seen attempts to do it since 1990. Doing it on a smartphone is interesting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Rebooting the Retail Beacon for Experience
In Retailwire: A look at beacons and their purpose. from SXSW. Certainly you don't want them to assault you, or erode your privacy. Now how can they serve you? A panel discussion. " ... A key theme to the panel was how technologies…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF CCC Postdoc Best Practices Arizona Conference April 10-11
The Principal Investigators for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Postdoc Best Practices Arizona Program, Chitta Baral, Partha DasGupta, and Pamela Garrett, cordially invite you to join…
From insideHPC
Allinea Supports OpenPOWER Debugging
Today Allinea Software announced that the C, C++ and F90 debugger Allinea DDT is now available for the OpenPOWER POWER8 architecture – marking a significant arrival in the ecosystem for developers on the platform.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Do You Want To Write Some Code?
OK I feel better. I was overcome with an urge to write some code. Now I have a program I should write. I want to combine my seating chart program (with pictures) with the program I use to randomly pick on students. I mean randomly…