Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2018
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Algorithms and Reading
How to Think for Yourself When Algorithms Control What You Read By Marc Zao-Sanders in HBR
With the flick of a switch, a handful of tech giants can change the nature and extent of mankind’s ingestion of information. In 2013,…
From insideHPC
Video: High Power Algorithms, High Performance Computing
Ahmed Hashmi from BP gave this talk at the Rice Oil & Gas conference. “The Oil and Gas High Performances Computing Conference, hosted annually at Rice University, is the premier meeting place for networking and discussion focused…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Should We Do More With Spreadsheets in CS Education?
The Microsoft Research podcast has some very interesting interviews. One of them is How Programming Languages Quietly Run the World with Dr. Ben Zorn There are many fascinating things in this interview. Internet of things, security…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Delivers a Watson Voice Powered Assistant
Been looking at this in Beta for some time. More detail to follow.
IBM delivers Watson-powered voice assistant for consumer brands
Alexa and Google Assistant have taken residence in people's homes. IBM aims to give companies…
From Schneier on Security
Dan Geer on the Dangers of Computer-Only Systems
A good warning, delivered in classic Dan Geer style....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Behavioral Implications of Grab and Go Retailing
Some interesting behavioral observations of early use of the lack of checkouts in Amazon's Grab and Go tests. We interviewed and watched consumers in our laboratory stores to learn how they felt and reacted to similar approaches…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Optimizing Health Policies with Bayesian Networks
Another excellent, mostly nontechnical presentation on the topic. Interesting is the decision model itself, and the topic of health decisions. Unlike most modeling methods, this approach embeds the details of the model into…
From The Eponymous Pickle
HBR: Getting Value from Machine Learning
Makes a very obvious case. That has existed since the beginning of computing. Yet still a good one to repeat. Systems must be easy enough to use. And then actually used, to make them valuable. Of course when you add in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Inferring Emotion and Cognitive Changes
The OBAIS department at the Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, invites you to attend a research seminar:
Date and time: Wednesday, March 28th, 2018, 11:00AM-12:00PM
Location: Lindner Hall 608
Speaker: Prof. Joe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Measuring Results
How Accurate Is Your AI?
from Kyoto University
A researcher at Kyoto University in Japan has developed a new technique that evaluates artificial intelligence's (AI) performance based solely on the input data. In typical AI development…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Testing and Automation of Assistant Skills
Like paying attention to the process of creating and delivering skills:
Building Engaging Alexa Skills: Why Testing and Automation Matter
By Paul Cutsinger In Amazon Developer
By Editor’s Note: Skill testing is one of the most…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Online Grocery to Reach $100 Billion
Online grocery sales could reach $100 billion by 2022, researchers say By Andrea Miller ABC
Walmart plans on expanding grocery delivery to 100 metropolitan areas
Instead of taking a trip to a local grocery store, more and
Walmart…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA Makes Visualization Easier in the Cloud
Visualizing the results of a simulation can give new insight into complex scientific problems. Interactive viewing of entire datasets can lead to earlier understanding of the challenge at hand and can enhance the understanding…
From insideHPC
Univa partners with UberCloud
Today Univa announced a new global partnership and reseller agreement with UberCloud. Under terms of the agreement, UberCloud, a leading HPC cloud provider, will resell Univa Grid Engine and related Univa products to UberCloud's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Macy's Using Virtual Reality for Furniture Sales
Really a pretty old idea, was one of the first ideas we examined for demonstration and sales. I encountered IKEAs approach in-store just a few days ago, well done, but not enough AR to understand how your choices would fit…
From insideHPC
Optalysys Speeds Deep Learning with Optical Processing
“Optalysys has for the first time ever, applied optical processing to the highly complex and computationally demanding area of CNNs with initial accuracy rates of over 70%. Through our uniquely scalable and highly efficient optical…
From insideHPC
Panel Discussion: Delivering Exascale Computing for the Oil and Gas Industry
In this video from the 2018 Rice Oil & Gas Conference, Addison Snell from Intersect360 Research leads a panel discussion on Exascale computing. "High-end computing and information technology continues to stand out across the
…
From insideHPC
Nimbus Data launches 100 Terabyte SSD
Today Nimbus Data announced the ExaDrive DC100, the largest capacity (100 terabytes) solid state drive (SSD) ever produced. Featuring more than 3x the capacity of the closest competitor, the ExaDrive DC100 also draws 85% less…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at Immortality through Nectome’s Mind Archival
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team goes off the supercomputing rails a bit with a discussion on digital immortality. "A new company called Nectome will reportedly archive your mind for future uploading to a machine. While…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI for Competitive Value
Everyone is still asking, how much of this is hype? There is an element of that, but clearly value as well. How much should the enterprise invest?
How machine learning is changing the game for app marketers in Thinking with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Speakers Addictive?
In what sense? Because they are frequently always on, perhaps, but because they use voice as assistants I find myself using them less than smartphone in public or semi-public situations.
How addictive are smart speakers? by…
From insideHPC
What a 200G HDR InfiniBand Solution Means for Today’s Advanced Data Centers
The world of today’s HPC computing is driven by the ever-increasing generation and consumption of digital information. And the ability to analyze this rapidly growing pool of data, and extrapolate meaningful insights, gives modern…
From Schneier on Security
Israeli Security Attacks AMD by Publishing Zero-Day Exploits
Last week, the Israeli security company CTS Labs published a series of exploits against AMD chips. The publication came with the flashy website, detailed whitepaper, cool vulnerability names -- RYZENFALL, MASTERKEY, FALLOUT,…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Advanced Placement Computer Science is a necessary evil for #CSforAll
Two controversial assertions in that title. That APCS is necessary and that it is evil. I thought about leaving this post at that and seeing what sort of conversation started but that didn’t work on Facebook so I figured itTo…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Driverless Pizzas to be Delivered before People
Inclined to generally agree, general driver less delivery should precede driver-less vehicles with passengers. If only for the liability and legal issues involved. Yet driver-less vehicles will come. But agree less with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fujitsu Human Centric AI
Was impressed with Fujitsu's work in retail when we visited.
Fujitsu drives a human centric model
AI is a core technology which enables many complex processes to be conducted independently of human judgment. Now, deep learning
To…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Baidu's AI Mimicing Voice
Baidu’s new A.I. can mimic your voice after listening to it for just one minute
By Luke Dormehl in Digital Trends
" ... “From a technical perspective, this is an important breakthrough showing that a complicated generative modeling…
From insideHPC
MATLAB adds new capabilities with Release R2018a
Today MathWorks rolled out Release 2018a with a range of new capabilities in MATLAB and Simulink. "R2018a includes two new products, Predictive Maintenance Toolbox for designing and testing condition monitoring and predictive…
From insideHPC
Advances in the Legion Programming Model
Wonchan Lee, Todd Warszawski, and Karthik Murthy gave this talk at the Stanford HPC Conference. "Legion is an exascale-ready parallel programming model that simplifies the mapping of a complex, large-scale simulation code on
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Samsung TVs Controlled with Bixby Assistant
Rumor out there that perhaps Samsung would tap Alexa and/or Google for voice control. But it seems they are sticking with their own Bixby voice assistant for controls. Up to now only on phones, that will likely soon change.…