Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2016
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 3 April 2016
Some weeks the blog post ideas flow like water. And then there is last week. I don't know how Doug Peterson and Mark Guzdial manage to get something interesting to post every day. Or at least every weekday in Mark's case. At …
From Phys.org Technology News
Move to OK commercial drone flights over people
A government-sponsored committee is recommending standards that could clear the way for commercial drone flights over populated areas and help speed the introduction of package delivery drones and other uses not yet possible,…
From Schneier on Security
Smart Essay on the Limitations of Anti-Terrorism Security
This is good: Threats constantly change, yet our political discourse suggests that our vulnerabilities are simply for lack of resources, commitment or competence. Sometimes, that is true. But mostly we are vulnerable because…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Industry 4.0
Interesting characterization of industry from the beginning to the Industrial Internet, mentioned here previously, we were members of its inception. See tag links below for more coverageIn CustomerThink:" ... The term Industry…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Who Does the Analytics?
This came to light in a recent project. .... and no one was willing to consider both alternatives.Human or Machine: The Most Important Question in Analytics by Tom DavenportArguably the most important questions in analytics…
From insideHPC
Call for Proposals: ALCF Data Science Program
The 2016 ALCF Data Science Program (ADSP) at Argonne has issued its Call for Proposals. The new initiative is targeted at "big data" science problems that require the scale and performance of leadership resources. "Our goal …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Metcalf's Law
A bit of research led me to look further at the background of the empirical Metcalf's Law:Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Look at the Dark Side of Metcalf's Law
The problem with the increasing size of your network, statistics:Bain & Company:" ... Telecommunications networks in general—and the Internet in particular—have changed our lives forever. Metcalfe’s Law explains why they’ve become…
From insideHPC
Video: OpenPOWER Roadmap Toward CORAL
"Last year IBM together with partners out of the OpenPOWER foundation won two of the multi-year contacts of the US CORAL program. Within these contracts IBM develops an accelerated HPC infrastructure and software development …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet of Things Needs Another Decade
In Computerworld: Disagree with the broad premise. Applications have existed in RFID, process control and beyond. It continues to evolve and requires attention to many details. Much opportunity. Following the evolution.
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Menu Collection
An example of crowdsourcing and identifying complex data. Or consider a menu a kind of expertise presentation.Help The New York Public Library improve a unique collection!We’re transcribing our historical restaurant menus, dish…
From Geeking with Greg
Quick links
What has caught my attention lately:
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Isn't Enough
Colleague Martin Lindstrom's recent book: Small Data: The Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends, was recently covered in a Fortune article. " .... It can’t give you the whole picture .... Here are 5 reasons why Big Data noThe…
From insideHPC
Supermicro Shipping Broadwell Servers and Storage Solutions in Volume
Today Supermicro announced its extensive support for the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 product family across SuperServer, SuperBlade, SuperStorage, SuperWorkstation and DP/UP motherboard product lines. Over 200+ Building…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Lustre Software Integrator at GDH
GDH Consulting in Albuquerque is seeking a Lustre File Systems HPC Software Integrator Integrator in our Job of the Week. "A systems programmer with proficient coding experience in C is required to participate in the implementation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blackberry Radar for Goods Security
Worked on related ideas for the supply chain enterprise a decade ago that used tagging and communicating capabilities to track trucks. There are suppliers that do this already. Huge amounts of money and security involved. A…
From Putting People First
A selection of Interaction 16 videos
In this post we highlight a number of Interaction 16 conference videos especially relevant to the Putting People First readers. They are grouped thematically. Algorithm-inspired design Crowds, algorithms and computations: The…
From Putting People First
Special Issue: Digitised Health, Medicine and Risk
Health Risk & Society is a new international scholarly journal devoted to a theoretical and empirical understanding of the social processes which influence the ways in which risks are taken, communicated, assessed and managed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Goals, Art and Engagement of Visualization
I was struck by the question: " ,,, Is the ultimate goal (of data visualization) communication, or engagement? ... " . My answer is that it should be clear communications that engages. Of course, depending on how important…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Setting up a “robust” Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi
My kids are gamers, and they love Minecraft. Minecraft sells its client software, but the server software is freely available. Since it is written in Java, it can run easily on Linux. Meanwhile, you can order neat little Raspberry…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Composite Materials Based on Squid Beaks
Squid-based research is yielding composites that are both strong and flexible. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From Schneier on Security
Reddit's Warrant Canary Just Died
Reddit has received a National Security Letter. I have long discounted warrant canaries. A gag order is serious, and this sort of high-school trick won't fool judges for a minute. But so far they seem to be working. Now we have…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bots as the Path Forward
Out of this weeks developer conference, some more useful thoughts. We saw this early, but did not have the sensor or AI capabilities to make it work. But are there enough now? And why bots? Likely because bots can be saidWhy…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Caution with False Patterns
A favorite topic of mine, and a nice piece on caution about finding patterns in data. Our brains are wired to find patterns, for survival and efficiency. Worth repeating ...The inherent clumpiness of randomnessFinding patterns…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Dot Throughout the Home
A clever short ad about the Amazon Dot, the new cheaper mini version of the Amazon Echo virtual assistant and smart home enabler. Just released this week. Have used the Echo since release, have a Dot on order. Have been exploring…
From Putting People First
Financial Times: the inflation enigma requires ethnographic analysis
Gillian Tett is the Financial Times’ US Managing Editor, a very frequent writer, and an anthropologist. Her column this week unconventionally argues for on-the-ground ethnographic research on people’s expectations on inflation…
From Putting People First
Two appealing books by designer Robert Curedale
This morning we received two books by designer Robert Curedale (who seems to be an extremely productive writer): Comprehensive step-by-step Guide to Experience Maps Journey Maps – Blueprints – Empathy Maps Design Community College…
From insideHPC
TYAN to Showcase 4U, 4x GPU Platform at GTC 2016
The FT76-B7922 is the first multi-purpose server platform that simultaneously supports scale-up (fat node) and scale-out (many-core CPU node). With 1:1 CPU to GPU ratio, TYAN’s FT76-B7922 provides a high price/performance and…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The Primes Strike Again
And lead to new kinds of cheating and ideas for our field src Faadosly Polir is the older brother of Lofa Polir. He is now working as a full time investigative reporter for GLL. Today Ken and I are publishing several of his recent…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
International Conference on Software Engineering 2016
The 38th International Conference on Software Engineering 2016 (ICSE) — the premier conference in software engineering sponsored by ACM and IEEE CS — is coming to Austin, Texas for a second time in May 14 – 22, 2016. There, the…