Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Singapore Innovation Center
More on P&G's Singapore innovation center. Including lots of images and descriptions of what goes on there. Nicely done piece from P&G itself. " ... Get a First Look at Our New Innovation Center in Singapore ... New high-tech…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Loom, Robots, Innovation and Jobs
In the WaPo: The Loom and Innovation. Anyone who has followed the history of computing knows the connection between the mechanical loom and computing in general. This article takes the connection further. " ... Will robots…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Digitizing Stores
In Retailing Today. On how Kroger is digitizing retail. Retail is the ideal industry to make this happen. It operates an internet of things that closely integrate with an internet of increasingly connected people. Analytics…
From Schneier on Security
Schneier Speaking Schedule: April–May
Here's my upcoming speaking schedule for April and May: Stanford Law School on April 15. Brown University in Providence, RI -- two times -- on April 24. The Global Summit for Leaders in Information Technology in Washington, DC…
From Schneier on Security
Schneier Talks and Interviews
Here are three articles about me from the last month. Also these three A/V links....
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Programming Languages Are Horrible
A bunch of my students in my honors programming class made the same error yesterday. Remarkably today Bertrand Meyer had a post about the very same error in the CACM Blog (Go read it – it’s great - Those Who Say Code Does Not…
From BLOG@CACM
Students As Computer Science Ambassadors
Our final year course where students get course credit for teaching computer science in high schools has benefits for kids, teachers and students alike.
From Schneier on Security
Auditing TrueCrypt
Recently, Matthew Green has been leading an independent project to audit TrueCrypt. Phase I, a source code audit by iSEC Partners, is complete. Next up is Phase II, formal cryptanalysis. Quick summary: I'm still using it....
From Writing
Got fast download but slow upload speeds? Here's a fix.
If you've found that your download speed is great, but your upload speed is abysmal, I've got a possible solution for you. I struggled with this issue for a while and decided to write down my findings in a blog post in case I…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Dream Tunnel Sequence from a Research Colleague
A research colleague is published! I will start it soon ...[Mark] " Lacy’s debut novel The Dreamtunnel Sequence is action-packed … Solid writing and a twisting plot …” – Kirkus ReviewsSee also his blog: http://markelacy.com…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science: ideals vs. reality
Fernando Pérez gave a talk at Pycon 2014 with a brilliant slide: The ideals reality of science: The pursuit of verifiable answers highly cited papers for your c.v. The validation of our results by reproduction convincing referees…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Contact Lens Camera
A fairly detailed analysis of a patent application by Google that embeds cameras in the human eye. I recall seeing a number of proposals like this a decade plus ago. The idea itself is almost as old as the contact lens. …
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Contributes To Big Data Review
As part of the Administration’s review of big data, privacy and the economy, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a Request for Information (RFI) in March. The RFI sought comments on the public policy implications…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Methods Taking place of Cookies
In Adage: How Mobile-Tech Players Are Crumbling the Cookie. Microsoft, Google, Apple Look to Track Consumers on Phones, Devices .... "
From Michael Nielsen
How the backpropagation algorithm works
Chapter 2 of my free online book about “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” is now available. The chapter is an in-depth explanation of the backpropagation algorithm. Backpropagation is the workhorse of learning in neural networks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Multilingual Promotion Apps
Simple idea. Useful statistics too. Quite appropriate: " ... Brands including General Mills and Clorox are targeting Hispanic consumers through the bilingual Veo mobile shopping app. The app engages consumers by using their…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Exciting College Courses
This weekend, The New York Times had an article titled 10 Courses With a Twist by Laura Pappano. Pappano describes that institutions of higher education are changing their models and putting more emphasis on teaching, making…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuromarketing and Consumer Behavior
Had not seen this site before. Here it is looks at a number of neuromarketing tests and associated data. Useful thoughts, in particular about the limitations of such work:" ... The claim that electroencephalograms (EEG) and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apps as Medical Devices
Apps and their regulation: Agree, this is a big deal. " ... The potential of medical apps to improve care and lower costs is enormous. But if developers don’t know how these apps will be regulated, they’re going to spend their…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CSTA Board of Directors Election
The election for six open positions of the CSTA Board of Directors is underway. If you were a CSTA member as of April 1, you should have received an email with a personalized link to the online ballot. If you did not receive…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The financial value of open source software
We all rely daily on free and open source software, whether we know it or not. The entire Internet is held together by open source software. The cheap router that powers you Wifi network at home uses the Linux kernel. Your android…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
My FDG 2014 Cruise Ship Conference Experience
You may recall that I was going to a conference on a cruise ship in April. Well, I'm back from Foundations of Digital Games 2014 and am happy to report that I have found another new favourite conference and community. The conference…
From Apophenia
Whether it’s bikes or bytes, teens are teens
(This piece was written for the LA Times, where it was published as an op-ed on April 11, 2014.) If you’re like most middle-class parents, you’ve probably gotten annoyed with your daughter for constantly checking her Instagram…
From Schneier on Security
GoGo Wireless Adds Surveillance Capabilities for Government
The important piece of this story is not that GoGo complies with the law, but that it goes above and beyond what is required by law. It has voluntarily decided to violate your privacy and turn your data over to the government…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
WATCH Talk – Deborah Frincke on “Education and Training NSA/CSS Style”
The next WATCH Talk is scheduled for April 17 at noon EST. Deborah Frincke will discuss Education and Training within the National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS). Dr. Frincke is the NSA/CSS Associate Director…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Coming back. What Will it look Like Now?
Short piece on a number of examples how what we called AI is coming back. Multiple and extended projects in the 90's led to real results, but not to extended uses in the enterprise decision process. Learning that came from…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links–14 April 2014
Crazy busy weekend for me. The weather was great and I got a lot done outside. Left me too tired to write this up last night. Sorry for the early birds who usually get here before now. Hope people find some useful things anyway…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Code: Echo–Programming Challenge
Using a coding challenge as a promotional event for a movie? This is a new one on me but it looks interesting. What I especially like is that they are sharing resources that students can incorporate into a game.
Here is a chance…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Summer Work for Computer Science and Robotics Instructors
If you are a member of the CSTA you should have received this announcement via email. BUT if you didn’t or you are not a CSTA member (why not?) I thought this worth sharing.
Summer 2014 Employment Opportunities: Computer Science…
From Computational Complexity
Factorization in coNP- in other domains?
I had on an exam in my grad complexity course to show that the following set is in coNP FACT = { (n,m) : there is a factor y of n with 2 \le y \le m } The answer I was looking for was to write FACTbar (the complement) as {…