Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2017
From The Eponymous Pickle
Miller Tries Voice/Push Button Beer Ordering
Voice and push-button ordering expands ...
In Adage: Push-Button Beer Ordering? Miller Lite Gives It a Try By E.J. Schultz.
" .... MillerCoors is giving lazy beer drinkers another excuse to stay put: The option to order beer…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
ACM and CSTA Announce Cutler-Bell Prize Student Winners
Make no mistake I think the Cutler-Bell Prize is an outstanding award. I love that it recognizes early computer scientists (high school students!) for outstanding achievement.
This year's winners appear (based on the names) to…From Computational Complexity
The Dagstuhl Family
…
From insideHPC
ISC 2017 Adds STEM Student Day
Today ISC 2017 announced the inclusion of the STEM Student Day & Gala at this year’s conference. Taking place June 21 in Frankfurt, the new program aims to connect the next generation of regional and international STEM practitioners…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Machine Learning is Used at Google
Video via O'Reilly:
Machine learning at Google
Rob Craft shares some of the ways machine learning is being used inside of Google. ...
From Schneier on Security
NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition
Every year, the NSA has a competition for the best cybersecurity paper. Winners get to go to the NSA to pick up the award. (Warning: you will almost certainly be fingerprinted while you're there.) Submission guidelines and nomination…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nest Protect Expands on IFTTT
Today an update of IFTTT capabilities for interacting with Nest-Protect sensor devices in the home. IFTTT lets you add layers of simple intelligence to the smart home (or business) based on streams of information from the an
Plan…
From insideHPC
Andrew Ng Leaving Baidu for Next Chapter in AI
"As the founding lead of the Google Brain project, and more recently through my role at Baidu, I have played a role in the transformation of two leading technology companies into “AI companies.” But AI’s potential is far bigger…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Announces Big Data Spokes Solicitation for 2018
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently announced a new program solicitation for the Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs: Establishing Spokes to Advance Big Data Applications (BD Spokes). The original award gave $10…
From insideHPC
1.5 Petaflop Supercomputer coming to IIT-Kharagpur in India
Today the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur announced that it will be the first academic institution to open a supercomputing facility under India's National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). This will provide large computational…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retail Implications for Alexa on iPhone
Seems it just increases choice and lets competition play out. May well drive Siri to more shopping options as well. Asking for trivia does not pay out. I would bet that Amazon knows more now about how to make voice channel…
From insideHPC
Penguin Computing Adds Omni-Path and Lustre to its HPC Cloud
Today Penguin Computing announced a significant expansion of their Penguin Computing On-Demand (POD) High Performance Computing Cloud. The new offering includes the latest Intel Xeon processorss, Lustre, and Intel Omni-Path.
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Rallying Around Common Goals
A most important topic, even more so today in our heavily interacting world. Focus.
Podcast: In Knowledge@Wharton
Meaningful Work: What Leaders Can Learn from NASA and the Space Race ...
New Wharton research looks at how
From insideHPC
Scalable Informatics Closes Down their Shop
We are sad to report that HPC vendor Scalable Informatics has gone out of business. Headed up by CEO Joe Landman, Scalable Informatics spent the last 12 years building 'Simply Faster" software-defined storage and compute solutions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Maps Location Sharing
Google Maps Location Sharing is being rolled out. Google had a service like this some time ago, that allowed you to very selectively share your instantaneous location among trusted 'friends and family'. We examined it forin…
From insideHPC
Will the White House Budget Affect HPC? How to Gain Market Share in an Uncertain Market
"Marketing is important in good times, but it can be even more important in bad times. If you have the means to invest in marketing, then do it now. Invest, because there will be many others who will hold onto funds until there…
From Schneier on Security
New Paper on Encryption Workarounds
I have written a paper with Orin Kerr on encryption workarounds. Our goal wasn't to make any policy recommendations. (That was a good thing, since we probably don't agree on any.) Our goal was to present a taxonomy of different…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Powers Prime Now with Alexa Voice
Still wondering how broadly this will increase shopping volume, and the degree to a which voice channel convenience will influence this. Essentially provides two hour delivery in 30 US markets via voice.
In Chain Store Age: …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Customer Engagement in the Cognitive Era
Watson Customer Engagement
Watson Marketing. Watson Commerce. Watson Supply Chain
Every touchpoint is an opportunity to engage customers. Are you ready? Watson Customer Engagement offerings deliver a broad range of capabilities…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Companies Leading the AI Revolution
An interesting piece, with a number of players I just heard of.
In KDNuggets: By Thuy T. Pham, U. of Sydney.
.... We detail the list of top 50 companies in Artificial Intelligence according to CBInsights. This list was KDnuggets…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Past CCC Chair Greg D. Hager Inducted to American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows
The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) just inducted the 2017 College of Fellows at their 2017 Annual Event at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., yesterday. Greg D. Hager, past…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphone Mechanics
Good thoughts. Don't know how practical this is of yet, but it maps out what standards and capabilities exist today. A good starting point for using your phone as an automotive maintenance predictive device. Also a good…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Documents from before 1930
Here is a listing of all the documents that the NSA has in its archives that are dated earlier than 1930....
From Putting People First
Introducing the upcoming Biennial of Democracy in Turin
Every two years the city of Turin hosts the Biennial of Democracy, an event of conversation and debate, that seems to become more timely and necessary as years go by. The current fifth edition will run from 29 March to 2 April…
From insideHPC
Supermicro Rolls Out Intel Optane SSD Platforms
Today SuperMicro rolled out a wide range of NVMe Flash server and storage systems with support for the new Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X based on 3D XPoint technology. "Being First-To-Market with the latest in computing technology…
From insideHPC
SuperMUC Helps Discover New Species Critical to Rainforest Ecosystems
Researchers using the SuperMUC cluster in Germany have discovered a set of unknown species in rainforest soils. As described in a new paper published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, their study on microbial diversity in tropical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Issues of Face Recognition
Had always thought that bio face recognition would make us more secure. But improvements in AI based systems may change this.
It's time to face the ugly reality of face recognition
The use of A.I. to recognize faces is growing…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing the Black Hole Speed Limit
Supermassive black holes have a speed limit that governs how fast and how large they can grow,” said Joseph Smidt of the Theoretical Design Division at LANL. Using computer codes developed at Los Alamos for modeling the interaction…
From insideHPC
DDN Names Bret Costelow VP of Global Sales
“Bret Costelow is an inspiring sales leader with a clear understanding of our customers’ needs and a vision of how DDN’s technologies and solutions can best solve their toughest data storage challenges,” said Robert Triendl,
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Walmart Incubates Buzzword Solutions
Giving it more direct access to rapidly emerging technologies.
Walmart is opening its own tech incubator in Silicon Valley
The retail giant wants to get a foothold in emerging technologies. by Andrew Dalton ...
" ... According…