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 Schneier on Security
The Youngest Security Researcher
Five-year-old finds login vulnerability in Microsoft Xbox....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Forecasting Tournaments
Interesting term, similarity to predictive markets and wisdom of the crowds. We ran some models in this space. Government reactions to use of related methods, by Mark J Perry
From The Eponymous Pickle
Metadata Lifecycle Models
For some proposed research I had been asked to look at metadata lifecycle models. Here is an interesting high level model for metadata lifecycle management. Similar to some methods we used in enterprise. See metadata tag…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 7 April 2014
Spring has sprung. Well at least the last of the snow is gone. Seems like late here but it hardly matters as I’ve been busy with school anyway. Seems like last week was slow for me on the Internet at least. Not to fear though…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Farnam Jahanian to become Vice President for Research at Carnegie Mellon University
Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director for the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF), has been selected as the new Vice President for Research at Carnegie Mellon…
From Computational Complexity
How free is Randomness?
Matthew Green had a great post on the topic how do you know a random number generator is working. Gee, I just look at the sequence and see if it LOOKS random. Probably not the best idea. Actually people often found pattersn …
From CERIAS Blog
Thoughts on the RSA Conference, Boycotts, and Babes
I’ve been delayed in posting this as I have been caught up in travel, teaching, and the other exigencies of my “day job,” including our 15th annual CERIAS Symposium. That means this posting is a little stale, but maybe it is …
From CERIAS Blog
Thoughts on the RSA Conference, Boycotts, and Babes
Not all of his answers went over with all of the crowd, but I think that showed he was giving some genuine answers of his own rather than trying to amuse. Informal Connections Lots of the real business at the conference really…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Zavers
Zavers now about a year plus after launch:About Zavers by GoogleZavers is a fast and easy way to offer the right coupons to the right shoppers, and track redemption in real time. Shoppers can find manufacturer discounts onwebsites…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Watson Analytics Beta
I have asked about how Big Data Analytics would be connected to Watson Cognitive Computing, and this was brought to my attention:Beta - IBM Watson Analytics, Previously Project NeoDownloads and TrialsWatson Analytics beta program…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamification for Engaging Job Candidates
In Mashable: Hardly traditional. We sent technical candidates 'to the board', to do things live, and that created dynamics. But also difficult to measure. And rarely used competitive dynamics, though all would agree that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon's Magic Retail Wand
Have always been impressed by Amazon's innovation work. Now the new Amazon Dash Wand takes the effort further into physical retail. How is it different from an App on a smartphone? See a picture and demo at the link. Seeking…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Collaborative Information Seeking
An abstract, but the challenge is interesting. " ... Information searches based on expert-seeking technology can prove time-consuming or unsuccessful if search terms do not turn up extrinsic identifiers in profiles and saved…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Statistical Challenges for Big Data
Covered in FlowinDdata: Review of another article where the point is that using Big Data bears some of the same challenges that were in evidence before data got 'Big'. So you cannot ignore those issues, some unsolved, that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kimberly-Clark on TV Advertising
Kimberly-Clark CMO on the TV driven past. " ... When it comes to digital marketing, marketers are like trapeze artists trying to grab the next bar without letting go of the last one, and the results could be embarrassing or…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alternative Machine Learning Environments
I am starting to examine Machine Learning Platforms for an application. This post is mostly for my own and a few collaborators use. Not complete or just open source. Do not claim to be expert in any of these methods, but have…
From Wild WebMink
More cautious excitement as Microsoft opens .Net
Originally posted on Meshed Insights & Knowledge:The Microsoft news is coming thick and fast. A few days ago we discussed Office for iPad, Microsoft’s confession of unethical behaviour and its release of MS-DOS code under a prohibitive…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Counting Is Sometimes Easy
Cases where we can count objects in polynomial time New Interim Dean source—our congrats Mike Sipser is one of the top theorists, especially in complexity theory, and has been Head of the Mathematics Department at MIT since 2004…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Counting Is Sometimes Easy
Cases where we can count objects in polynomial time New Interim Dean source—our congrats Mike Sipser is one of the top theorists, especially in complexity theory, and has been Head of the Mathematics Department at MIT since 2004…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid + Security in a Cartoon
Funny....
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Helping Students Get a Handle on Data
A day never goes by that I don't hear some mention of data (big or otherwise) that has create problems or is being used to solve a myriad of problems. "If only we had more data on Flight 370" or "The government has too much data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
LifeScribe Beta Launched
Have always liked the idea of facilitating the process of telling stories to help people. And capturing stories that people already have to communicate. What is more enriching than the life stories of our friends and families…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Showing Your Work
From Accidental Creative: I like the thoughts. Again showing up is a good first step."Show your work, and when the right people show up, pay close attention to them, because they'll have a lot to show you."- Austin Kleon…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet of Retail Things
On an internet of retail things. Precisely the kind of thing we researched. Could an item tell us where it was on the shelf? If it was in a cart or misplaced? Where was it manufactured or tested last? Who is responsible for…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Challenges of the Internet of Things
On April 2, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council kicked off its spring Council meeting with a discussion with Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, on the challenges of the “Internet of Things” (IoT), such…
From Computational Complexity
How I learn a result
There is a theorem I want to learn. How do I go about it? (How do YOU go about it?) I give an example here which also leads to pointers to some mathematics of interest. A division of a cake between n people is PROPORTIONALhere…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wiki Management
A slideshow. And book on the concept: " ... It’s a brave, new hyper-connected world… We now live in a “wiki” world where mass collaboration is not only possible—it’s often the best solution. Conventional management thought assumes…
From Schneier on Security
Mass Surveillance by Eavesdropping on Web Cookies
Interesting research: Abstract: We investigate the ability of a passive network observer to leverage third-party HTTP tracking cookies for mass surveillance. If two web pages embed the same tracker which emits a unique pseudonymous…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Don’t study latin if you want to become a better programmer
I used to think that knowledge was strongly transferable. I believed that learning physics could make you a better mechanic. I believed that learning mathematics could make you a better physicist or computer scientist. After…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Asimov's Future
Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was a favorite of mine while growing up. He got a number of things right in his futuristic predictions, others wrong. A comparison of the two.