Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2017
From insideHPC
Video: 2016 HPC Market Results, Growth Projections, and Trends
In this video from the HPC User Forum in Santa Fe, Earl Joseph from Hyperion Research provides an HPC Market Update. "Formerly the IDC HPC Research Group, Hyperion Research tracks the high performance market."
The post Video:…
From insideHPC
Mellanox InfiniBand Delivers up to 250 Percent Higher ROI for HPC
Today Mellanox announced that EDR 100Gb/s InfiniBand solutions have demonstrated from 30 to 250 percent higher HPC applications performance versus Omni-Path. These performance tests were conducted at end-user installations and…
From insideHPC
OCF Builds POWER8 Supercomputer for Atomic Weapons Establishment in the UK
High Performance Computing integrator OCF is supporting scientific research at the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), with the design, testing and implementation of a new HPC cluster and a separate big data storage system…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Driven Clothes Shopping
I think I have seen at least three recommender-engine driven apparel selection systems pitched to me, none have survived. This is a tough sell. Touch and 3D would help. Another mirror like idea utilizing machine vision. In…
From BLOG@CACM
Fact Over Fiction
Given a choice between the right to mass-disinform and democracy, I choose democracy.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sensor Filled Gloves
A prototype for gloves that contain health sensors
Sensor-filled glove could help doctors take guesswork out of physical exams
" .... Now, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of California San Diego and Rady…
From The Eponymous Pickle
UPS Using Beacons for Accuracy
It sounds like the beacons are being used to get indoor accuracy to affirm location. And alert the system to misplacement. Reducing error. In ChainstoreAge:
UPS uses beacons to quell shipping errors, By Deena M Amato-McCoy…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The real lesson of the human genome project
When I was pursuing my PhD, the human genome project was often both regarded as overly ambitious (maybe even impossible) and full of possibilities. To many people’s surprise, the project was declared complete back in 2003, much…
From BLOG@CACM
Evaluating Computer Science Undergraduate Teaching: Why Student Evaluations Are Likely Biased
Unconscious bias is pervasive in computing, and training is our best remedy, how can untrained students evaluate their CS teachers without bias?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Editing Photos with Neural Networks
In NVidia Blog, quite interesting piece on generating new photos from collections of photos. In other words editing them. The article is quite technical, but outlines how new problems are being solved this way. Also offers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Broad View of Amazon
Interesting view from CBInsights about Amazon. Pointer to a further strategy document. I agree, quite a breadth of directions by a former book seller.
Amazon Strategy Teardown: Building New Business Pillars In AI, Next-Gen
Seattle…
From The Eponymous Pickle
PC Magazine Reviews Watson Analytics
A review in PC Magazine that much likes Watson Analytics, describing it as a self-service analytics tool rather than cognitive.
From insideHPC
PBS Works will Power New Supercomputer at BASF
Over at the Altair Blog, Jochen Krebs writes that the new HPC cluster at BASF will run PBS Works workload management software. "What does it take to go from months to mere days in gaining results when conducting research? Supercomputing…
From insideHPC
OpenStack for Research Computing
"This talk will present the motivating factors for considering OpenStack for the management of research computing infrastructure. Stig Telfer will give an overview of the differences in design criteria between cloud, HPC and
…
From Mostafa Dehghani
Beating the Teacher: Neural Ranking Models with Weak Supervision
Our paper "Neural Ranking Models with Weak Supervision", with Hamed Zamani, Aliaksei Severyn, Jaap Kamps, and W. Bruce Croft, has been accepted as a long paper at The 40th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Building its Own Quantum Chip
Have followed quantum computing from the beginning. Even offered some industrial test problems for potential solution. Followed NASA and Google Tests of research and startup efforts. Good to see real solutions approaching.…
From insideHPC
The Computer That Could Be Smarter than Us – Cognitive Computing
Ingolf Wittmann from IBM presented this talk for the Switzerland HPC Conference. "This presentation will point out based on real examples how HPC environments can benefit from such solutions and technologies to drive cognitive…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Towards an Era of Mass Collaboration
Good overview of the idea, and players that are helping to make it happen. with similar challenges to any kind of group work measurement.
We're Entering A New Era of Mass Collaboration By Greg Satell @Digitaltonto In Inc:…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Linux Infrastructure Engineer at 10X Genomics
Bay Area Startup 10x Genomics is seeking a Linux / Infrastructure Engineer in our Job of the Week. "We are looking for an exceptional engineer with a solid understanding of Linux, storage, and infrastructure to join our IT team…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (April 21st, 2017)
Can we trust software? Lance Fortnow, a famous computer scientist, answers… Sometimes I feel we put to much pressure on the machines. When we deal with humans, for example when we hire people, we have to trust them, assume they…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Rolls Out Lex Chatbot Tools
Amazon rolls out conversational Chatbot interface 'Lex'. Am looking for better yet conversational and memory capabilities for Lex. Good technical overview at the link.
Amazon Lex – Build Conversational Voice & Text Interfaces…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Earth is Updated
We were much impressed with Google Earth, even used it for things like showing where our plants were worldwide, and providing 'tours' to their locations. Seems not that much has been done to it in some time, but the Verge reports…
From Putting People First
An anthropologist in the boardroom
“It is often tempting to think that the 21st-century world is so closely integrated and digitised that the issue of culture is becoming irrelevant,” writes Gillian Tett in the Financial Times. “But behind the scenes, a growing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technology and Societal Change
How Technology Can Help Solve Societal Problems
The Network Revolution
In the next article of the series, “The Network Revolution: Creating Value through Platforms, People and Technology,” authors Barry Libert, Megan Beck, Brian…
From Putting People First
Boston’s human-centered research to design middle-income housing
In Boston, the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is conducting ethnographic, human-centered research to design middle-income housing that reflects people’s lived experiences, reports the Stanford Social Innovation Review.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Selfie Drones
Drones that can follow you around to take pictures and perhaps provide security? In Engadget:
" ... The term "selfie drones" may suggest an added level of convenience, but in reality, these machines still share one common pain…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Video of Squid Attacking Another Squid
Wow, is this cool. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here....
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Retailers can Cope with Slowing Growth
In Knowledge@Wharton, Non -Technical, but quite strategic these days. Recall talking to Marshall Fisher while in the enterprise. (See his book)
How Retailers can Cope with Slowing Growth
Wharton's Marshall Fisher discusses…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mercedes Connecting to Amazon Echo and Google Assistants
The breadth of this is most interesting. All their new cars can link to both of the most common assistants. Seems an indicator of popularity of the assistant idea as yet not seen. A first true link between Smart Home and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Home Recognizes Distinct Voices
A major issue with home assistants, that they cannot distinguish between members of a household, is being remedied this week. The Google Home assistant, which I have had under test since its inception, can now distinguish up…