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 insideHPC
Allinea Software Powers Heart Simulation Framework
The Allinea Forge parallel code development suite is helping to speed up exciting computational cardiology research at the Medical University of Graz. "Utilizing the power of the VSC-3 supercomputer at the University of Vienna…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Does Commercial Bockchains
Broad group of uses for the enterprise.
IBM Goes Live With First Commercial Blockchains
Michael del Castillo (@DelRayMan) |
Tech giant IBM is set to unveil what it's calling the first "commercial application" of Hyperledger’s open…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Datasets For Use in Teaching Computer Science
I found this thanks to the APCS A mailing list.
CORGIS Datasets Project
The Collection of Really Great, Interesting, Situated Datasets
“The CORGIS Datasets Project seeks to make highly-motivating introductory computing experiences…From Schneier on Security
WikiLeaks Not Disclosing CIA-Hoarded Vulnerabilities to Companies
WikiLeaks has started publishing a large collection of classified CIA documents, including information on several -- possibly many -- unpublished (i.e., zero-day) vulnerabilities in computing equipment used by Americans. Despite…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on Samsung Bixby Assistants
With backstory, and an indication of Samsung's considerable investment into AI. Plus integration into more devices. Seems a competitive position as advisory and smart home leverage. Worth following.
Galaxy S8 and beyond: Samsung…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stickers vs SnapChat
Can Apple’s new iMessage ad convince you that stickers are as cool as Snapchat? There is a heavy history of the use of stickers, especially in Japan. Difficult prediction to make. Heavily advertised now in the US college…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Does software performance still matter?
This morning, a reader asked me about the real-world relevance of software performance: I’m quite interested in your work on improving algorithm performance using techniques related to computer architecture. However, I thinkContinue…
From Schneier on Security
Friedman Comments on Yardley
This is William Friedman's highly annotated copy of Herbert Yardley's book, The American Black Chamber....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple and Augmented Reality
In CW: Some thoughts and speculations about how Apple might implement augmented reality. Outside the obvious game spaces. Apparently in evidence by their recent hires in the VR space and investments in parallel. by Jonny…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
WHISPER: A New Persistent Memory Benchmark Suite
The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Vice Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While he is coauthor of the paper discussed, he blogs anyway, because a benchmark suite can be valuable…
From insideHPC
Intel’s Diane Bryant on How AI Will Change Lives
"Artificial Intelligence will deliver the next wave of societal transformation on parallel with the industrial, technical and internet revolutions that preceded it. As our AI-fueled future evolves, we have a tremendous opportunity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Samsung Unveils Bixby as Assistant
Another new virtual advisor emerges, competing it seems for now just for the S8 phone and competing with Siri. and Google Assistant. Can we also expect this on TVs and addressing the Smart Home and other appliances? Is likely…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Doubles Silicon Photonics Ethernet Transceiver Speeds to 200Gb/s
Today Mellanox introduced a new line of 200Gb/s silicon photonics and VCSEL-based transceivers in the same QSFP28 package as today’s 100Gb/s products. These new transceivers double the bandwidth for hyperscale Web 2.0 and cloud…
From insideHPC
PRACE 2 Adds Piz Daint Supercomputer
Earlier this month, the European PRACE initiative went into Phase 2, with Switzerland becoming a new Hosting Member. As a Hosting Member, Switzerland is now making its Piz Daint supercomputer at CSCS available for cutting-edge…
From insideHPC
Apply Now for the PEARC17 Student Program
PEARC17 provides students with a range of opportunities in the Technical Program and in targeted student activities. For all student attendees, PEARC17 will include a one-day intensive collaborative modeling and analysis challenge…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at Recent Report Calling for Aggressive Action to Compete with China in Supercomputing
In this podcast, Radio Free HPC looks at a recent report that the USA needs to take aggresive action to keep up with China in High Performance Computing. Produced by the NSA-DOE Technical Meeting on High Performance Computing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Delivers Medical Advice via WebMD
An example where an advisory system is essentially just replacing a long existing web service. With the convenience of voice interaction. With no additional conversational interaction as yet implied. A deeper connection to…
From Schneier on Security
Security Vulnerabilities in Mobile MAC Randomization
Interesting research: "A Study of MAC Address Randomization in Mobile Devices When it Fails": Abstract: Media Access Control (MAC) address randomization is a privacy technique whereby mobile devices rotate through random hardware…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Interpreting Machine Learning
By their nature the results from deep learning and neural methods can be non transparent. Via O'Reilly.
Ideas on interpreting machine learning
Mix-and-match approaches for visualizing data and interpreting machine learning models…
From Computational Complexity
If you want to help your bad students DO NOT give an easy exam
1) When I was a grad student TAing Formal Lang Theory we had a final ready to give out but noticed that one problem was too hard. So we changed it. But we made it too easy. Whoops. My thought at the time was this will help the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Tango Location is Testing at Lowes
Been a long time tester of retail location intelligence solutions. Now news that Lowes is starting to test Google Tango location intelligence using augmented reality on phones. Have also mentioned the interior space model…
From The Noisy Channel
I recognize that my participation in the gig economy is hardly representative of most people’s…
I recognize that my participation in the gig economy is hardly representative of most people’s experience. Indeed, I wrote a post about “The Hook-Up Economy” (https://medium.com/@dtunkelang/the-hook-up-economy-ba340c0fdf2c#.h2xk22wt8…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will we be Dinosaurs in Three Years?
Reminds me of things said at the end of the last AI up tick ... Wildly exaggerated. Most of us will use it rather than develop it. Mark Cuban via Via O'Reilly.
From insideHPC
Intel Rolls Out First Optane SSD with 3D XPoint Technology
"Delivering an industry-leading combination of low latency, ultra endurance, high QoS, and high throughput, the Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series is the most responsive data center SSD. Built with the revolutionary new 3D XPoint…
From insideHPC
Video Preview of the SC17 Student Cluster Competition
"SC17 is excited to hold another nail-biting Student Cluster Competition, or SCC, now in its eleventh year, as an opportunity to showcase student expertise in a friendly yet spirited competition. Held as part of SC17’s Students…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gadget Earth Video
A video view of the personalities and capabilities of drones and other semi autonomous gadgets out of the recent CES conference. From the Verge. Impressive.
" ... Wandering the halls of CES 2017 recently with video director…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphones Revolutionizing Medicine
In the CACM: New details on gow smrtphone devices are changing medicine and health data.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will AI Transform Retail Marketing
Will AI transform retail marketing? by Tom Ryan In Retailwire:
A survey from Sailthru finds more retailers using artificial intelligence (AI) to support marketing purposes.
The survey of more than 200 retail marketers showed
Still…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa and Roomba in the Smart Home
We worked with the Roomba concept. Though I liked the idea, never found it useful enough to add to our smart home .... Will it be more useful enough when voice controlled?
With Alexa integration and mapping, iRobot aims to make…
From insideHPC
Intel MKL and Intel TBB Working Together for Performance
When used in a TBB environment, Intel has demonstrated a many-fold performance improvement over the same parallelized code using Intel MKL in an OpenMP environment. Intel TBB-enabled Intel MKL is ideal when there is heavy threading…