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 insideHPC
Alibaba Cloud Offers AI Cloud Services to Help Battle COVID-19 Globally
Today the Alibaba Cloud announced it has offered medical personnel around the world a set of advanced cloud-based technology applications in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Included are artificial intelligence-enhanced…
From insideHPC
Intel Scales Neuromorphic System to 100 Million Neurons
Today Intel unveiled Pohoiki Springs, its latest and most powerful neuromorphic research system providing the computational capacity of 100 million neurons. "Pohoiki Springs scales up our Loihi neuromorphic research chip by more…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Remote Detection of Virus
Makes sense by remotely sensing heat. Of course temperature does not mean virus, but a first test for at a distance scanning. Here an existing system. Unsure of availability.
This AI camera detects people who may have COVID…
From insideHPC
Atipa Technologies Joins Bright Reseller Program
Today Bright Computing announced that Atipa Technologies has become the latest company to join the Bright Computing Partner Program, as an Advanced Reseller. “Through our partnership with Bright Computing, we will incorporate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Detecting Odors
I often mention research in this area because we spent considerable time looking at the idea of an 'artificial nose' to effectively test quality in products, especially coffee, but in other areas as well. Here more in the…
From insideHPC
XSEDE Supercomputers Complete Simulations Pertinent to coronavirus, DNA Replication
Fundamental research supported by XSEDE supercomputers could help lead to new strategies and better technology that combats infectious and genetic diseases. "Chemical reactions, life, doesn't happen that quickly," Roston said…
From Putting People First
Mass panic unlikely during pandemics
Two articles, one by Matt Simon in Wired and another by Benedict Carey in the New York Times, summarize scientific research that illustrates why mass panic is unlikely in this pandemic situation.
From Computational Complexity
What to do while stuck at home Part I
First of all both the Turing award and Abel Prize announced yesterday.
As we start moving from the panic phase of the coronavirus to the boring phase, what kinds of things should you do or not do while stuck at home for the
…
From Schneier on Security
Work-from-Home Security Advice
SANS has made freely available its "Work-from-Home Awareness Kit." When I think about how COVID-19's security measures are affecting organizational networks, I see several interrelated problems: One, employees are working from…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Update on RFID Tags
Related updates for specific RFID applications. See also continuous updates on this technology.
Vizenex RFID, manufacturing RFID Tags:
Vizinex RFID, which manufactures RFID tags for specific applications, has launched its Sentry…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
ACM Announces 2019 Turing Award Recipients
The following blog is from the ACM Bulletin on March 18, 2020. ACM has named Patrick M. (Pat) Hanrahan and Edwin E. (Ed) Catmull recipients of the 2019 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics…
From Putting People First
Torino, how are you?
How are we doing in this emergency?
Collecting the answers we will not only know how we are, what has changed in our habits, and what our needs are, but we will also observe how the people close to us are doing in the various…
From Putting People First
Torino, come stai?
Come stiamo in questa emergenza?
Raccogliendo le risposte potremo sapere non solo come stiamo noi, cos’è cambiato
nelle nostre abitudini e quali sono le nostre necessità, ma osserveremo anche come
stanno le persone a noi vicine…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teaching From Home–Day 3
I miss my students. It’s hard talking and not seeing or hearing any reactions. Are they getting my jokes? Even polite laughter and pretending I am funny would be a help. My schedule is weird as well. A lot of extra time. I’mOf…
From insideHPC
OnScale Offering Free Cloud Core-Hours to Engineers Working from Home
Today OnScale announced that it will provide free cloud core-hours to customers to promote customer safety and mitigate any productivity loss due to office shutdowns. "OnScale will offer free cloud core-hours to our customers…
From insideHPC
Hyperion Research Looks at COVID-19’s Impact on the Global HPC Market
Today Hyperion Research released a statement on the impact of the coronavirus on the HPC Market. "Because the trajectory and current extent of COVID-19 are unclear and hard to predict, Hyperion Research believes it is too soon…
From insideHPC
AMD Powers Azure NVv4 Virtual Machines for HPC Workloads
The AMD and Microsoft partnership continues to expand this week with the launch of Microsoft Azure NVv4 Virtual Machines. Powered by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC Processors and AMD Radeon Instinct GPUs, the powerful new VMs are now generally…
From insideHPC
Software-defined Microarchitecture: An Arguably Terrible Idea, But Certainly Not The Worst Idea
James Mickens from Harvard University gave this talk at HiPEAC 2020. ". In this presentation, I will describe some of the benefits that would emerge from a new kind of processor that aggressively exposes microarchitectural state…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bring Best Digital Means to Physical Stores
More changes in stores, but these will also be adapted to address future emergency situations like those we are experiencing now.
How can retailers bring the best of digital commerce to physical stores? Plus expert comment
How…
From Schneier on Security
The Insecurity of WordPress and Apache Struts
Interesting data: A study that analyzed all the vulnerability disclosures between 2010 and 2019 found that around 55% of all the security bugs that have been weaponized and exploited in the wild were for two major application…
From insideHPC
ISC 2020 Registration to Open this Week with COVID-19 Advisory
Today the ISC 2020 conference announced that registration will open on March 19 along with a Covid-19 Advisory. The conference takes place June 21-25 in Frankfurt. "In light of the ever-changing situation, we are offering our…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Avoiding cache line overlap by replacing one 256-bit stores with two 128-bit stores
Memory is organized in cache lines, frequently blocks of 64 bytes. On Intel and AMD processors, you can store and load memory in blocks of various sizes, such as 64 bits, 128 bits or 256 bits. In the old days, and on some limited…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Uses of Inactive Pill Ingredients
Some interesting AI driven uses of 'inactive ' pill ingredients.
“Inactive” pill ingredients could raise the dose of your medication
With help from artificial intelligence, researchers identify hidden power of vitamin A and ordinary…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Leprechauns Stay Home
Stay safe, everyone Cropped from Floss Dance source Neil L. is a Leprechaun. He has visited me once every year since I started GLL. I had never seen a leprechaun before I began the blog—there must be some connection. Today, Ken…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teaching From Home–Day 2
My advisory (homeroom) was interesting. For one thing I realized that thee isn’t the chatter between students in the room. I’m pretty sure they are texting and what not but even these “digital natives” like to talk in real life…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Research at AAAS
The following blog is from Ann Schwartz Drobnis, CCC Director. Every February brings an exciting event for scientists – the AAAS Annual Meeting. AAAS is the American Association for the Advancement of Science, whose mission…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Creates Transcribe
Had seen and noted this before, likely quite helpful for business applications. I remember noting its need to be embedded in the enterprise Looking forward to see it on Assistant and IOS Devices.
Google Translate launches Transcribe…
From Computational Complexity
Richard Guy passed away at the age of 103
Richard Guy passed away on March 9, 2020 at the age of 103. Before he died he was the worlds oldest living mathematician (see here for a list of centenarians who are famous scientists or mathematicians). He was also the oldest…
From insideHPC
GigaIO Brings FabreX to vScaler Cloud Platform
Today GigaIO announced availability of FabreX for vScaler's management interface. As the industry's first in-memory network, FabreX will bolster vScaler's cloud appliances for artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, biotechnology…
From BLOG@CACM
The Internet of Things and the Future of Virus Detection and Prevention
Leveraging the Internet of Things in indoor environments could help prevent highly infectious diseases from spreading rapidly in today’s global world.