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 The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at Tensorflow
A straigthforward examination of Google's Open Source Tensorflow, with Python code. And ultimately, for this application, disappointment with the result. Motivation for what to do, but not why to use it. A look at the Python…
From insideHPC
Technical Marketing is more than Speeds and Feeds
"Outside of a company’s product or service, the number one most important primary call-to-action elements for success are establishing marketing goals and messaging. This strategic step establishes the building blocks that lead…
From insideHPC
DDN Rolls Out GRIDScalar GS14K High-Performance NAS
Today DDN introduced the "industry’s fastest and most flexible" scale-out network attached storage (NAS) solution. As the newest product in the DDN GRIDScaler product family, the GS14K, delivers the speed and scale that data …
From insideHPC
Video: Superscalar Programming Models – Making Applications Platform Agnostic
"StarSs (Star superscalar) is a task-based family of programming models that is based on the idea of writing sequential code which is executed in parallel at run-time taking into account the data dependencies between tasks. The…
From insideHPC
Computer Aided Engineering Leaps Forward with HPC for Manufacturing
Manufacturing is enjoying an economic and technological resurgence with the help of high performance computing. In this insideHPC webinar, you’ll learn how the power of CAE and simulation is transforming the industry with faster…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Digital Transformation Playbook
Brought to my attention by a correspondent at ColumbiaThe Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age (Columbia Business School Publishing) Hardcover – April 5, 2016by David L. RogersOn order, they…
From Schneier on Security
Another FBI Filing on the San Bernardino iPhone Case
The FBI's reply to Apple is more of a character assassination attempt than a legal argument. It's as if it only cares about public opinion at this point. Although notice the threat in footnote 9 on page 22: For the reasons discussed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innovating out of Commodity Traps
In Innovation Excellence:The commodity trap is a significant threat for manufacturers in premium market segments. It describes the tendency of competing products to become more and more similar, thus nullifying any competitive…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
A History of the New Math (and lessons for CS Ed)
Many of us remember the New Math from personal experience. I do from elementary school in the 1970s in West Hurley, NY. I loved it. I learned that the decimal system is arbitrary and numbers could be expressed in any … Continue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
EU's Robotic Nose
A long time challenge, a system that can detect and recognize aroma. We experimented in the area of coffee beans and blend classification, linked to optimizing machine learning.In the CACM: The European Union's BIOMACHINELEARNING…
From insideHPC
FlyElephant Platform Adds Private Repositories
flyelephantToday the FlyElephant announced a number of upgrades that allow users to work with private repositories with an improved system security and good task functionality. "FlyElephant is a platform for scientists, providing…
From Schneier on Security
Financial Cryptography 2016
Ross Anderson liveblogged this year's Financial Cryptography conference....
From insideHPC
A3Cube Announces Exa-Converged Parallel Systems
Today Italy's A3Cube announced the F-730 Family of EXA-Converged parallel systems built on Dell servers and achieving sub-microsecond latency through bare metal data access. "A3Cube’s EXA-Converged infrastructure represents the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Steps to Gamification
While there have been some useful gamified processes, it is often hard to understand how to proceed beyond just testing a number of options. Consider the steps to gamification.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF WATCH Talk- Privacy: Plural, Contextual, Contestable but not Unworkable
The next WATCH talk, called Privacy: Plural, Contextual, Contestable but not Unworkable is Thursday, March 17, 2016 from Noon-1pm EDT. The presenter is Deirdre K. Mulligan an Associate Professor in the School of Information at…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Chat as Interface
In Medium: Amusing thoughts. Chat and vocal interface can be very useful, but it is much harder to define, debug and direct than a classic user interface. Until you get something that is very AI like. And even then,…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of March 14
House and Senate committees continue to hold FY17 hearings. Members face deadlines for programmatic and language submissions for consideration in FY17 appropriations bills. Monday, March 14, 2016 Markup: H.R. 2666: No Rate Regulation…
From insideHPC
Mellanox & Cadence Demonstrate PCI Express 4.0 Multi-Lane PHY IP Interoperability
Today Cadence announced a collaboration with Mellanox Technologies to demonstrate multi-lane interoperability between Mellanox's physical interface (PHY) IP for PCIe 4.0 technology and Cadence's 16Gbps multi-link and multi-protocol…
From insideHPC
Elastic Computing Comes to Swiss University from ProfitBricks and Bright
Today Bright Computing announced that it has teamed up with the Germany-based ProfitBricks to provide a cutting edge elastic HPC solution to a Swiss University. "This is a unique example of how Bright Computing can help a company…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Nominations for 5th Annual FCC Chairman’s Awards for Advancement in Accessibility
Two weeks left for nominations for the 5th Annual FCC Chairman’s Awards for Advancement in Accessibility. The Chairman’s Awards aim to highlight and encourage innovation in accessible technologies, standards, and best practices…
From insideHPC
Intel® Omni-Path Architecture—A Next-Generation HPC Fabric
Even though it’s a new generation fabric, Intel OPA is still backwards compatible with the many applications in the HPC community that were written using the OpenFabrics Alliance* software stack for InfiniBand. So, existing InfiniBand…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Biology and computing are more alike than you think…
Biological systems are seemingly of infinite complexity. We still don’t know what a heart attack is, not really. Despite billions spent, we still don’t know what Alzheimer’s is. We don’t what aging is, not really. We don’t know…
From ACM on Huffington Post
Computer Science Education in the Age of CS for All
For many individuals and organizations, having CS education raised to the level of being a national priority is a dream come true.
From Schneier on Security
Possible Government Demand for WhatsApp Backdoor
The New York Times is reporting that WhatsApp, and its parent company Facebook, may be headed to court over encrypted chat data that the FBI can't decrypt. This case is fundamentally different from the Apple iPhone case. In that…
From insideHPC
Students: Apply for ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational & Data Science Fellowships
Submissions opened today for ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational & Data Science Fellowships. Designed to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, the program will support…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Maple Syrup and Coding For Fun
It’s maple syrup time in New Hampshire where I live. My wife and I with some help from the neighbor kid decided it was time we got in on the fun. So we bought some supplies and tapped a couple of trees. The picture on the right…
From Putting People First
[Book] The Smarter Screen
![[Book] The Smarter Screen](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior by Shlomo Benartzi Penguin Random House October 2015, 256 pages A leading behavioral economist reveals the tools that will improve our decision making…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
One Flip Sends Many Bits
Another coins on a chessboard puzzle Cropped from Ashley’s TwiCopy source Hou Yifan and Maurice Ashley are champions of chess in several senses. Hou just regained the Women’s World Champion title by defeating Mariya Muzychuk…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Finally Leveraging 30 Years of Knowledge in AI?
In the Enterprise we talked to Cyc for potential application in the enterprise, but at the time there were no clear applications. Cyc is an attempt to record and make useful common knowledge that can be part of AI. Ultimately…
From insideHPC
Inaugural Dell HPC Community Meeting Coming to Austin April 18-21
"This meeting is open to all Dell HPC customers and partners. During the event, we will establish the Dell HPC Community as an independent, worldwide technical forum designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas among HPC professionals…