Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2016
From Putting People First
[Book] Small Data
![[Book] Small Data](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends Hardcover by Martin Lindstrom February 23, 2016 St. Martin’s Press, 256 pages Martin Lindstrom, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, harnesses the power of “small data” in his quest…
From The Eponymous Pickle
3D Printing and Robotic Assembly
Still a Kickstarter prototype ... Printing and assembling ... " ... 3D printers are wonderful tools for modern makers and tinkerers, but all by themselves they can make little more than plastic trinkets and pieces of larger…
From insideHPC
Best Practices – Dynamic Tuning for Energy Efficiency
"Today’s server systems provide many knobs which influence energy efficiency and performance. Some of these knobs control the behavior of the operating systems, whereas others control the behavior of the hardware itself. Choosing…
From insideHPC
Trio of SGI Systems to Drive Innovation at ŠKODA AUTO
Today SGI announced that ŠKODA AUTO has deployed an SGI UV and two SGI ICE high performance computing systems to further enhance its computer-aided engineering capabilities. "Customer satisfaction and the highest standard of …
From The Eponymous Pickle
BlockChain as Game Changer
So what is it. A good non technical and somewhat visual introduction. In BusinessInsider:Goldman Sachs says the technology "has the potential to redefine transactions" and can change "everything."JPMorgan last month announced…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP Acquiring Roambi
During the earliest emergence of tablets and smartphones for advanced data display, we looked at Roambi to provide mobile, agile data visualization for executives. It is still used by companies like Costco. They were one In…
From Geeking with Greg
Virtual reality hitting the mainstream: The next $100 bet
Virtual reality is hot again, with dedicated hardware headsets launching from multiple manufacturers intended for general use. The world is substantially different than the last time this happened. In particular, there's more…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Trip Report–Ed Camp Boston 2016 – #edcampBOS
I spent most of today at one of the Microsoft offices in Cambridge MA for the Boston EdCamp. EdCamp is an unconference about education. Not much (well really none) about computer science but a lot of teaching in general and using…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Expand your Signal Hunting Skills
In Forbes: I like using the term 'signal' here. " .... One of the key observations about the difference between big data sources and those traditionally used by enterprise applications is the strength of the signal. As Anant…
From The Eponymous Pickle
McDonalds Happy Meal VR Viewers
In Fast Codesign: In what seems to be a trend, McDonalds is testing cardboard VR headsets to be used with smartphones, fashioned origami style from happy meal boxes. Will this convert kids to avid VR users? Something similar…
From insideHPC
Accelerating Deep Learning with HPC
In this video from the 2016 Stanford HPC Conference, Sumit Sanyal from Minds.ai presents: Deep Learning: Convergence of HPC & Hyperscale. "Minds.ai an early stage startup building software and hardware infrastructure to deploy…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Senior HPC Engineer at Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University is seeking a Senior HPC Engineer in our Job of the Week. "The Senior HPC Engineer will be responsible for day-to-day oversight, integration, administration & maintenance of the HPC Clusters. The selected…
From updated sporadically at best
The Angst Overhead
In high school, our crew coach often reminded us to relax our faces. Crew is a sport based on precision and pain. Though frowning is often the natural response, holding on to tension while rowing simply wastes energy. Recently…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
It is easy to lose sight of why we do things…
I like to write and publish research papers. I think it can be tremendously useful. A research paper serves as a reference describing what was done and what was achieved. Others can learn from these records, verify them, andContinue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mismeasure of Uncertainty
Stephen Few thoughtfully reviews Willful Ignorance: The Mismeasure of Uncertainty, by Herbert Weisberg.Modern science relies heavily on an approach to the assessment of uncertainty that is too narrow. Scientists rely on statistical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Driving Everyone Towards an Innovative Firm
In Innovation Management: Innovation is very much the word of the moment. We hear it used in science, the arts, in politics, in society, and often for good reason. For example, the creation and building of the European Union,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Advanced Social Media Insights
On Using IBM Watson Analytics for Advanced Social Media Insights - SHIFT Communications PR Agency ... " ... As marketers and communicators, we must always improve our social media results. Our stakeholders want more followers…
From Putting People First
How the World Bank is ‘nudging’ attitudes to health and hygiene
Many of the problems governments and NGOs in developing countries are trying to fix are at least partly behavioural. This is where nudge theory comes in. It is about using insights from behavioural science to identify reasons…
From Putting People First
McKinsey on customer experience
McKinsey just published no leas than six articles on customer experience: From touchpoints to journeys: Seeing the world as customers do To maximize customer satisfaction, companies have long emphasized touchpoints. But doing…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Whale Mistaken for Squid
A purported giant squid that washed up on the shore in Norfolk, England, is actually a minke whale. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From Schneier on Security
Sabotaging Bicycle Racks
This is the first time I've heard of this clever hack. Bicycle thieves saw through a bicycle rack and then tape it back together, so unsuspecting people chain their bikes to them....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots Impacting Jobs
In K@W: Interview with Martin Ford, author of "Rise of the Robots"." ... Today, robots are increasingly handling many jobs in manufacturing that were done by human hands not more than 20 years ago. This sea change has affected…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Continues to Work at Automatic Replenishment
Printer ink, detergent, other essentials for the smart home. As they continue to make headway in making the home smarter. From shopping list updates to direct push button reorder to smart devices that reorder their own needs…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at Dell’s Imminent Acquisition of EMC
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Dell's acquisition of EMC, which is expected to close soon pending regulatory approval. "The transaction combines two of the world’s greatest technology franchises—with leadership…
From insideHPC
Interview: Why Co-design is the Path Forward for Exascale Computing
"Co-Design is a collaborative effort among industry thought leaders, academia, and manufacturers to reach Exascale performance by taking a holistic system-level approach to fundamental performance improvements. Co-Design architecture…
From insideHPC
With GPUOpen, CGG Fuels Petroleum Exploration using AMD FirePro GPUs
Today AMD announced that CGG, a pioneering global geophysical services and equipment company, has deployed AMD FirePro S9150 server GPUs to accelerate its geoscience oil and gas research efforts, harnessing more than 1 PetaFLOPS…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gartner on Customer Journey Analytics. Then Thinking Beyond.
A manifesto, on customer journies. Nicely thought out. Then this made me think beyond the customer domain. Suppose I mapped the journey of an employee in an enterprise and how that related to their goals, organization, results…
From insideHPC
Video: Panel Discussion on Exascale Computing
In this video from the 2016 Stanford HPC Conference, Gilad Shainer from the HPC Advisory Council moderates a panel discussion on Exascale Computing. "Exascale computing will uniquely provide knowledge leading to transformative…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Theoretical Foundations for Social Computing Workshop Report
Contributions to this post were made by Jenn Wortman Vaughan, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and a member of the workshop’s organizing committee. The organizing committee for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Industrial Simulation vs Agent Models
Had thought about this difference for some time. A new examination brought this paper up. A good technical, practitioner eye view. Here DES means Discrete Event systems (Classic Industrial Monte Carlo simulation) and ABS means…