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 insideHPC
DDN Leads 2015 TOP500 List of Global Supercomputing Centers
“DDN’s selection for seven consecutive years as strategic partner and storage vendor of choice by the overwhelming majority of supercomputer centers on the Top500 list is a testament to the continuous innovation and performance…
From insideHPC
SGI Update: Zero Copy Architecture (ZCA)
"In high performance computing, data sets are increasing in size and workflows are growing in complexity. Additionally, it is becoming too costly to have copies of that data and, perhaps more importantly, too time and energy …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Storytellers Secrets
From PreziPresentation expert Carmine Gallo has created an amazing prezi about how some of the best storytellers do what they do. From Richard Branson to Malala Yousafzai, these charismatic leaders tell stories that inspire their…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Aviation Week Opens its Vault
My recent increased interest in technical aviation history sees this:" ... To celebrate its 100th year in publication, Aviation Week magazine opened up its vault. Every cover, every article, every photo and every ad published…
From Computational Complexity
Changing This Ancient Art Into a Science
From Schneier on Security
Company Tracks Iowa Caucusgoers by their Cell Phones
It's not just governments. Companies like Dstillery are doing this too: "We watched each of the caucus locations for each party and we collected mobile device ID's," Dstillery CEO Tom Phillips said. "It's a combination of data…
From insideHPC
Monash University Joins NVIDIA Technology Centre Asia Pacific
Today Monash University announced that it has become the first spoke of the NVIDIA Technology Centre Asia Pacific. With its hub is in Singapore, the NVIDIA Southeast Asia Technology Centre is based at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Playful City Designs
Not only practical design, but how about playful design? Here a UK effort on the idea. Not gamification dynamics in the sense of competition, but promoting curiosity and even innovation. Too often forgotten. Also with a strong…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Video AI
More plans to roll AI into commonly used software:I’m going to make Facebook’s AI predict what happens in videos.... Facebook unveiled several artificial intelligence projects. Yann Lecun, the company's director of AI, reveals…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New NSF Partnership with the Semiconductor Research Corporation on Energy-Efficient Computing
The following is a special contribution to this blog by Sankar Basu, National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Director for Computing and Communication Foundations. NSF recently announced a new program solicitation, Energy-Efficient…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A comment on Faulty Measurement : Ads that no one Sees
I recall being told about this odd fact. That measurement of online viewing of Adverts has by its nature been very wrong, and this creates some unexpected results in measurement and thus programmatic and AI Ad placement. Other…
From Schneier on Security
WikiLeaks Publishes NSA Target List
As part of an ongoing series of classified NSA target list and raw intercepts, WikiLeaks published details of the NSA's spying on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli prime minister Benjamin…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Agent-Based Supply Chain
Have mentioned this paper a number of times here, there has just been some increased interest in the concept. Consider how such a system could be integrated with an advisory AI system, to evaluate given solutions? Note the…
From insideHPC
Students: Get your Team Together for the SC16 Student Cluster Competition
Students interested in demonstrating their high-performance computing skills on a global stage are invited to team up and sign up to compete in the tenth annual Student Cluster Competition at the SC16 Conference to be held Nov…
From Putting People First
Why We Post: social media through the eyes of the world
Nine UCL anthropologists spent fifteen months living in nine communities around the world, researching the role, uses and consequences of social media in people’s everyday lives. University College London just launched an enormous…
From insideHPC
Red Bull Racing Speeds Simulation with ANSYS
Today the Red Bull Racing Formula One team announced an extended agreement with ANSYS. The team uses ANSYS' simulation software to optimize its vehicle design enhancements for a competitive edge on the track.
The post Red Bull…From insideHPC
A Look at HPC and Hyperscale Trends for 2016
"In this talk, Intersect360 Research returns with an annual deep dive into the trends, technologies and usage models that will be propelling the HPC community through 2016 and beyond. Emerging areas of focus and opportunities…
From insideHPC
Brocade Launches Industry-First Gen 6 Fibre Channel Switch
Today Brocade announced the industry’s first Gen 6 Fibre Channel switch for storage networking. The Brocade G620 is a high-density SAN switch that delivers breakthrough performance and scalability designed to support data growth…
From insideHPC
Interview with Bill Wagner, CEO of Bright Computing
In this video, Bill Wagner of Bright Computing, describes what attracted him to join the company as CEO and what's ahead for system management software. "Bright addresses the exploding demand to manage increasingly complex IT…
From insideHPC
CFMS Joins Hyperflux++ Project to Advance CFD
Today the Centre for Modeling & Simulation (CFMS) in the UK announced it will be taking part in a follow-on to the Hyperflux project. "Hyperflux ++ builds on the successful Innovate UK project ‘Hyperflux’ - developing next generation…
From Putting People First
How semiotic ethnography solved the riddle: What do chronic pain patients want?
In this article Laura S. Oswald discusses the advantages of semiotic research methods for decoding consumer experiences and translating them into marketing strategy. Oswald focuses specifically on the innovative research techniques…
From Schneier on Security
Lots More Writing about the FBI vs. Apple
I have written two posts on the case, and at the bottom of those essays are lots of links to other essays written by other people. Here are more links. If you read just one thing on the technical aspects of this case, read Susan…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Geoffrey Hinton on Deep Learning
Thoughtfully done short, non technical interview on the topic. with Google's AI and Deep Learning 'Godfather' Geoffrey Hinton. We worked with neural nets in the 80s to learn rudimentary tasks, mostly with supervised learning…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Days, Weeks, Months, and Leap Years
Yesterday was Leap Day – 29 February – a day which only comes along once every four years. Or so. It’s actually more complicated than that which we’ll get to in a moment. What this means for me is, you guessed it, programming…
From Putting People First
[Research paper] Do Europeans Like Nudges?
Do Europeans Like Nudges? By Lucia A. Reisch (Copenhagen Business School) and Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard Law School) 29 February 2016, 37 pages Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2739118 Abstract: In recent years, many…
From Putting People First
Singapore’s main newspaper on Experientia’s design with the elderly
Arti Mulchand reports in the Straits Times, Singapore’s main newspaper, on Experientia’s “Design for Ageing Gracefully” project: Putting faces to end-users early in the design process is changing the way designers and organisations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How the Brain Computes the Mind
In the Edge. Does the brain compute the mind? by Ed Boydon. " ... How can we truly understand how the brain is computing the mind? Over the last 100 years, neuroscience has made a lot of progress. We have learned that there…