Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2019
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Multiplying by the inverse is not the same as the division
In school, we learn that the division is the same as multiplying the inverse (or reciprocal), that is x / y = x * (1/y). In software, this does not work as-is when working with integers since 1/y is not an integer when y is an…
From insideHPC
Video: A New Era in HPC
In this video from the 2019 Rice Oil & Gas conference, Trish Damkroger from Intel presents: A New Era in HPC. "In this keynote presentation, Trish will discuss the changing landscape of high performance computing, key trends,…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at AAAI-19
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at the 33rd Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19), January…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
High School CS Education: Where Do We Start and Where Do We Go?
There are a number of sets of standards with most based on the CSTA standards (https://www.csteachers.org/general/custom.asp?page=standards) and the K-12 CS Framework (https://k12cs.org/). A lot of really smart people (and me…
From insideHPC
ARCHER2 Supercomputer coming to University of Edinburgh
Today the University of Edinburgh announced plans to deploy ARCHER2, a £79 million national supercomputer that will be five times faster than the UK’s current capabilities. "ARCHER2 will provide UK science with an unparalleled…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at NVIDIA’s acquisition of Mellanox
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at NVIDIA's acquisition of Mellanox. "This called for an emergency session of our crack panel. While it will be several months before the full impact of this merger is felt, the
…
From Schneier on Security
On Surveillance in the Workplace
Data & Society just published a report entitled "Workplace Monitoring & Surveillance": This explainer highlights four broad trends in employee monitoring and surveillance technologies: Prediction and flagging tools that aim to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI and Customer Experience
Largely agree its all about the relatively mundane, though these capabilities must be carefully linked into the right processes and values.
How Companies are Using AI to Revolutionize the Customer Service Experience
By Haris Saeed…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Don’t Cross The Data Types
Remember in the first Ghostbusters movie where the ghostbusters are told not to cross the stream of their ghost busting guns? And then at the end they do cross the streams? Mixing data types is like that some times. You really…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Workshop Report on Side and Covert Channels in Computing Systems
This is a blog post by CCC Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As readers on the CCC blog know, the Meltdown and Spectre microprocessor design flaws revealed in early 2018 made clear that many, if not…
From insideHPC
New Texascale Magazine from TACC looks at HPC for the Endless Frontier
This feature story describes how the computational power of Frontera will be a game changer for research. Late last year, the Texas Advanced Computing Center announced plans to deploy Frontera, the world's fastest supercomputer…
From insideHPC
Quobyte to showcase software defined storage for Machine Learning at GTC
Today Quobyte announced announced plans to showcase distributed storage technology at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley next week. Quobyte software defined storage turns commodity servers into a reliable and…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA to Purchase Mellanox for $6.9 Billion
Today NVIDIA announced plans to acquire Mellanox for approximately $6.9 billion. The acquisition will unite two of the world’s leading companies in HPC. Together, NVIDIA’s computing platform and Mellanox’s interconnects power…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Voice Morphing
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Limits of Deep Learning
Very perceptive. Deep learning is not AI, and many challenges still exist.
What are the limits of deep learning? Original paper.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by M. Mitchell Waldrop
The much-ballyhooed artificial…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of the Ad Agency
Former associate Lou Killeffer talks about the future of the Ad Agency. Worked closely with the concept of ad agencies and their use of data for years, and he makes some useful predictions. An excerpt:
For Whom the Bell Tolls…
From insideHPC
Achieving the Best QoE: Performance Libraries Accelerate Code Execution
The increasing consumerization of IT means that even staid business applications like accounting need to have the performance and ease of use of popular consumer apps. Fortunately, developers now have access to a powerful group…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Pharmacology
New moves forward in drug creation.
‘Virtual Pharmacology’ Advance Tackles Universe of Unknown Drugs
University of California, San Francisco
By Nicholas Weiler
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and the University…
From The Noisy Channel
Search Engines: A Human Perspective
At first glance, the design and development of search engines appear to be concerned mainly with computer science — particularly information retrieval, machine learning, and natural language processing.
But search isn’t just a…From Schneier on Security
Russia Is Testing Online Voting
This is a bad idea: A second innovation will allow "electronic absentee voting" within voters' home precincts. In other words, Russia is set to introduce its first online voting system. The system will be tested in a Moscow neighborhood…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Difference Between BPM and RPA?
We did both, starting with years of BPM (Business Process Modeling) .... found the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) ideas more focused to specific improvement while BPM is much more often connected to detailed semantic data…
From CERIAS Blog
March Sadness
March is a month of changes. We see winter beginning to recede (we hope!) and spring begins to show. The vernal equinox is around March 20 and heralds a return to more light than dark.
March is the month I was born (or hatched…From Computational Complexity
Richard Karp: His influence and how to honor him
When I first saw the definition of NP-Complete I first thought if there are NP-complete problems I suspect they are contrived. When I saw the proof that SAT is NP-complete I thought okay, so there is one natural problem NP-complete…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Problems With a Point
Bill and Clyde’s new book Bill Gasarch and Clyde Kruskal are colleagues in Computer Science at the University of Maryland. They have just seen the publication of their book Problems With a Point. Today Dick and I congratulate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sams Pilots Makes Scanning more Efficient
The difference here is simple, users don.t have to search for a barcode. And we assume that this will work with sometimes non barcoded product like produce? Have used Scan & Go at Kroger. Will customers notice? How different…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Swarms of Drones Herding Sheep
Whats most interesting here is the use of swarms of multiple drones performing a group task. Which is what we tested , but not sheepor dogs, Or does it? I quote from the full artcle: " ... A single drone can do the job of…
From insideHPC
Agenda Posted: OFA Workshop in Austin March 19-21
Today the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) posted the OFA Workshop 2019 Agenda & Abstracts for their upcoming OFA Workshop. With sessions on ranging from interoperability and remote persistent memory to deployment of fabric technologies…
From insideHPC
Video: A Fast, Scaleable HPC Engine for Data Ingest
David Wade from Integral Engineering gave this talk at the Stanford HPC Conference. "In this talk, a design is sketched for an engine to ingest data from the IOT massively into a cluster for analysis, storage and transformation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Interview on AI that People can Trust
Especially as these methods continue to grow in augmenting human capabilities.
Building Trustable AI in Kellogg
Artificial intelligence is here to stay. Machines are getting smarter, faster, and are poised to play ever greater…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stats on Voicebot Assistant Use from Voicebot.ai
Continued rise here by 39%. A continued opportunity to leverage the advance of a new retail and communication channel.
U.S. Smart Speaker Ownership Rises 40% in 2018 to 66.4 Million and Amazon Echo Maintains Market Share Lead…