Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2020
From Schneier on Security
More on Crypto AG
One follow-on to the story of Crypto AG being owned by the CIA: this interview with a Washington Post reporter. The whole thing is worth reading or listening to, but I was struck by these two quotes at the end: ...in South America…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Slingshotting to Exascale
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the Cray Slingshot interconnect that will power all three of the first Exascale supercomputers in the US. "At the heart of this new interconnect is their innovative 64 port switch…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SETI Shuts Down
SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestial Intelligence) Have followed this effort for many years, even participated for a while in the 90s. Perhaps sad, but I have not seen any verifiable results. Also note folding@home, also mentioned…
From The Eponymous Pickle
North Korean Cryptocurrency Money Laundering
Considerable detail in recent Technology Review Article. An indication of how carefully we need to examine and regulate these technologies. Much more at the link.
This is how North Korea uses cutting-edge crypto money laundering…
From BLOG@CACM
Voting as Tallying in Public
Voting requires common acknowledgement. Can that be achieved in automation?
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Announcing Creation of the Foundational Research in Robotics Program
Dear Colleagues: The National Science Foundation announces the creation of the Foundational Research in Robotics (Robotics) program as a program jointly managed by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Used to Support the US Tax Code
Makes perfect sense to look for patterns and predictions based on complex rules.
AI Comes to the Tax Code By The Wall Street Journal
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is using artificial intelligence to map taxpayer relationships…
From insideHPC
ORNL Enlists #1 Summit Supercomputer to Combat Coronavirus
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have used the world’s most powerful and smartest supercomputer, the IBM AC922 Summit, to identify 77 small-molecule drug compounds that might warrant further study in the fight…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autonomous Drone piloting
Could have used this for our forestry resource measurements, which required expensive and time consuming surveys by road or helicopter. Further doing this to determine embedded tasks for resource analysis.
Drones can now scan…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Physician Voice Assistant Suki
Have now seen several related system, it appears none of these have been successful.
Physician Voice Assistant Startup Suki Closes $20M Funding Round
Eric Hal Schwartz in Voicebot
Suki, the developer of an eponymous voice assistant…
From insideHPC
Prof Simon See receives Singapore HPC Pioneer & Achievement Award
Prof Simon See from the NVIDIA AI Technology Center has received the Singapore HPC Pioneer & Achievement Award from SupercomputingAsia conference series. Dr. See was recognized for his efforts in setting up the first NVAITC in…
From insideHPC
New Paper Surveys Optimization Techniques for Intel Xeon Phi
A new paper by Dr Sparsh Mittal surveys techniques for evaluating and optimizing Intel's Xeon Phi. Now accepted in Concurrency and Computation 2020, the survey reviews nearly 100 papers. "Intel Xeon Phi combines the parallel
…
From insideHPC
New Leaders Join Exascale Computing Project
The US Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project has announced three leadership staff changes within the Hardware and Integration (HI) group. "Over the past several months, ECP’s HI team has been adapting its organizational…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Reinventing the Memory-Storage Paradigm
In this Chip Chat podcast, Intel Fellow Frank Hady explores the relationship of memory and storage to compute, and outlines how Intel is helping accelerate performance throughout information ecosystems and re-invent the memory…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kirk Borne on AI and Human Nature
Have met Kirk, he has an astrophysics background similar to mine. Here a podcast with him by Byron Reese.
On Episode 108 of Voices in AI, Byron and Kirk Borne discuss the intersection between human nature and artificial intelligence…
From insideHPC
Video: Overview of the Fujitsu A64fx processor
This video from Coreteks provides an overview of the Fujitsu A64FX processor that will power the pending Fugaku supercomputer in Japan. "The A64FX is a many core CPU like AMD Epyc or Intel's Xeons, but at the same time it behaves…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Adapting Policing from Your Doorbell
Continue to follow this. As a user and a believer in using technical collaboration to make the world safer. Some interesting adaptations to construct community watch capabilities via Ring.
Ring update gives you more control…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Responding to the Unexpecteced
A place where we often need assistance, Often an important aspect of process design and optimization. Technical.
Cognitive Work of Hypothesis Exploration During Anomaly Response
A look at how we respond to the unexpected
Marisa…
From Computational Complexity
A New College of Computing at Illinois Tech
In 1890, Chicago South Side pastor Frank Gunsaulus gave a sermon where he said that with a million dollars he could build a school where students of all backgrounds could prepare for meaningful roles in a changing industrial…
From Schneier on Security
Security of Health Information
The world is racing to contain the new COVID-19 virus that is spreading around the globe with alarming speed. Right now, pandemic disease experts at the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and…
From BLOG@CACM
Getting a Program Right (4, Also Includes 3')
Trying again.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technology and the Future of Marketing
An interesting Podcast re the future of marketing and its implications.
Why Omni-channel Personalization Is the Future of Marketing
Podcast
Netcore's Rajesh Jain talks about how technology is shaping and transforming the future
All…
From insideHPC
AMD to Power 2 Exaflop El Capitan Supercomputer from HPE
Today HPE announced that it will deliver the world’s fastest exascale-class supercomputer for NNSA at a record-breaking speed of 2 exaflops - 10X faster than today’s most powerful supercomputer. The new system, which the DOE’s…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Boston Dynamics Handle Robot
With video of the robotic system being used in real warehouses.
Handle Teams Up With Mobile Robots on Warehouse Logistics
Boston Dynamics and OTTO Motors partner to show how a heterogeneous robot team can be faster and more efficient…
From insideHPC
Applications Open for “Advancing Cancer Biology at the Frontiers of Machine Learning” Innovation Lab
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, and Knowinnovation are convening experts in cancer systems biology, mathematical modeling and machine learning to come together, share ideas…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pay for Data You Use—Not Data You Store
Towards using/measuring the value of data you use.
Cloud Services Tool Lets You Pay for Data You Use—Not Data You Store
IEEE Spectrum
Charles Q. Choi
Computer scientists at George Mason University have developed a new caching technique…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning and Earthquake Data
Been following this thread for sometime. Been testing the CA use of local earthquake warning systems. Actual predictive methods seem to be lagging here. But the basic idea is very good. Here aimed at detecting geothermal…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Rush to Deploy Robots in China Amid Coronavirus Outbreak
Rush to implement robotic solutions. Less potential infection, but are they skilled and perceptive enough to perform assistant functions needed?
A patrol robot checking temperature and disinfecting people The Rush to Deploy Robots…
From insideHPC
ISC 2020 Keynotes Focus on Shaping Tomorrow
Today ISC 2020 announced that Mattias Troyer and Thomas Sterling will be keynote speakers at the event. During his keynote, Troyer will describe the hardware and software architectures of quantum computers systems and discuss…
From insideHPC
Xilinx SmartNIC Accelerates Network, Storage, and Compute on Single Device
Today Xilinx announced the industry’s first SmartNIC platform delivering true convergence of network, storage and compute acceleration functions on a single device. "The U25 combines a highly optimized SmartNIC platform with
…