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 The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Welcomes Maddy Hunter!
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is delighted to welcome Maddy Hunter! The Computing Research Association (CRA) recently hired Maddy as a Program Associate for the CCC subcommittee. In this role, she provides support…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Positive Tools for Challenging Times
I see that long-time correspondent Sunnie Southern of ViableSynergy has a newsletter about 'Positive Tools for Challenging Times'. Check it out:
Positive Tools for Challenging Times
This is the second in a series of emails with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Tracks Virus 'Weather'
A nicely done Covid-19 tracking app is part of the IBM 'Weather Channel' App. Shows location and trends continually updated, based on your location. Nicely shown on the bottom of the App with a red button to click. With other…
From insideHPC
DARPA Grant to Foster Practical Quantum Computing with Rigetti
Today Rigetti Computing announced the company has been awarded up to $8.6 million from DARPA to develop a full-stack system with proven quantum advantage for solving real world problems. “We believe strongly in an integrated
…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teaching From Home–Day 9–Students Backchanneling
My good friend and peer teacher, Tom Indelicato and I share a morning homeroom. It’s online now of course but we join early and stay late to touch base with each other. We’re both teaching sections of our school’s freshmen computer…
From insideHPC
New AI Solutions from Dell Technologies
In this special guest feature, Dave Frattura from Dell Technologies writes that the company is helping customers simplify and drive data science and AI initiatives that can deliver valuable insights, automation and intelligence…
From insideHPC
Fast Track your AI Workflows
In this special guest feature, our friends over at Inspur write that for new workloads that are highly compute intensive, accelerators are often required. Accelerators can speed up the computation and allow for AI and ML algorithms…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neural Networks Search for New Materials
Mentioned previously here. Novel use of 'creativity' to search among possible solutions.
Neural networks facilitate optimization in the search for new materials
by David L. Chandler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
An iterative…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmented Analytics
For now not replacing but rather augmenting people. Unlike the article I would say this has been around for a long time.
Augmented Analytics Drives Next Wave of AI, Machine Learning, BI
Business intelligence will move beyond…
From Schneier on Security
On Cyber Warranties
Interesting article discussing cyber-warranties, and whether they are an effective way to transfer risk (as envisioned by Ackerlof's "market for lemons") or a marketing trick. The conclusion: Warranties must transfer non-negligible…
From insideHPC
University of Birmingham joins COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium
The UK government has backed their leading clinicians and scientists this week with new resources to map how COVID-19 spreads and evolves using whole-genome sequencing. Through a £20 million investment, the consortium will look…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Timing is the Thing for Modeling the Risk
Forecasting once again is essential for knowing how to react.
Supply chain outlook: The timing of the slowdown
MIT Professor David Simchi-Levi forecast the mid-March manufacturing pause. Now he looks ahead.
Peter Dizikes | MIT News…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowdsource the Problem, Distribute Solutions.
Lots of Possibilities Here, find ways to find them
Folding@Home Network More Powerful Than World's Top 7 Supercomputers Combined
Tom's Hardware
by Paul Alcorn
The Folding@Home distributed computing network is currently churning out…
From insideHPC
Ayar Labs, DARPA and Intel Replace Electronic I/O with Efficient Optical Signaling
Researchers from Intel and Ayar Labs working on PIPES have successfully replaced the traditional electrical input/output (I/O) of a state-of-the-art field programmable gate array (FPGA) with efficient optical signaling interfaces…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Generating Videos
Video synthesis to supplement with real world data.
IBM’s AI generates new footage from video stills
Kyle Wiggers @KYLE_L_WIGGERS in VentureBeat
A paper coauthored by researchers at IBM describes an AI system — Navsynth — that generates…
From BLOG@CACM
Powerful Online Learning is a Distributed System
In the midst of a pandemic, universities are now rapidly shifting to online and remote learning. Here, I will suggest a core metaphor for what powerful online learning can look like. The Distributed Systems Metaphor for Online…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Personality Key for Open Source Contribution?
Depends if we can really detect useful personality measures of this type, and if they will be stable under differing contexts and goals.
Personality Key in Whether Developers Can Contribute to Open Source Projects
Waterloo News…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Defending Retail Against the Coronavirus
Useful approaches outlined.
Defending Retail against the Coronavirus
Companies can brace themselves for lasting changes to the sector even as they grapple with short-term disruption.....
By Marc-André Kamel and Joëlle de Montgolfier…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Announces New Expeditions in Computing Awards
The National Science Foundation‘s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) established the Expeditions in Computing (Expeditions) program more than a decade ago “to build on past successes and provide…
From insideHPC
Student Teams Encouraged to Join the 3rd APAC HPC-AI Competition
Student teams are encouraged to apply for the 2020 APAC HPC-AI Competition. Continuing the success of the previous competitions, student teams will square off against international teams to produce solutions and applications
…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Supercomputing the Coronavirus on Frontera
Scientists are preparing a massive computer model of the coronavirus that they expect will give insight into how it infects in the body. They've taken the first steps, testing the first parts of the model and optimizing code
…
From Putting People First
Four possible scenarios of how the corona crisis can transform the world
How will the pandemic change the way we live and do business?
In this whitepaper the Zukunftsinstitut describes four possible scenarios of how the corona crisis can transform the world.
From insideHPC
Timelapse Video: Sawtooth Supercomputer Assembly
In this video, technicians install the Sawtooth supercomputer at Idaho National Laboratory. "Named after a central Idaho mountain range, Sawtooth arrived in December and will be available to users soon. The $19.2 million system…
From insideHPC
The Role of Middleware in Optimizing Vector Processing
A new whitepaper from NEC X delves into the world of unstructured data and explores how vector processors and their optimization software can help solve the challenges of wrangling the ever-growing volumes of data generated globally…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teaching From Home–Day 8–Online Teaching Stations
We sure are learning a lot about online classes these days. Teachers at my school are using Google Meet and Zoom in about equal numbers. This means that students are seeing a lot of both tools. At some point there will be a lot…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tires Get Embedded Tech
As the article suggests, a bit unexpected, but its where the system and its uses meets the real world, and its useful to know what is being sensed, in real time and over time.
The Humble Tire Gets Kitted Out with Technology
The…
From Schneier on Security
Facial Recognition for People Wearing Masks
The Chinese facial recognition company Hanwang claims it can recognize people wearing masks: The company now says its masked facial recognition program has reached 95 percent accuracy in lab tests, and even claims that it is…
From insideHPC
European HPC ecosystem supports the fight against COVID-19
The European PRACE initiative has released a list of partner activities and initiatives to help conbat COVID-19. While medical professionals are working around the clock to help those affected, PRACE partners, HPC centres, and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
China Launches Blockchain Network
Decreasing costs and increasing the ease of blockchain application building. Seems a considerable effort.
China to Launch National Blockchain Network in 100 Cities
IEEE Spectrum
Nick Stockton
An alliance of Chinese government
…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teaching From Home–Day 7
Well this is the new normal I guess. We had snow last night and several students missed homeroom this morning. I am assuming it is because of power outages in the area. No calling a snow day or even a two hour delay.
My big effort…