Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2018
From insideHPC
Charliecloud: Unprivileged Containers for User-Defined Software Stacks
"What if I told you there was a way to allow your customers and colleagues to run their HPC jobs inside the Docker containers they're already creating? or an easily learned, easily employed method for consistently reproducing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Talk: AI and Business Process
Reminder, later this morning:
Talk by: Chitra Dorai, IBM Fellow, Vice President and CTO
“The Real World of AI: Business Processes Reimagined End to End”
19 Apr 2018: 10:30 AM, ET Access Instructions below.
Talk slides and later…
From insideHPC
Exascale Computing for Long Term Design of Urban Systems
In this episode of Let's Talk Exascale, Charlie Catlett from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago describes how extreme scale HPC will be required to better build Smart Cities. "Urbanization is a bigger set…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intel Backs off Smart Glasses
Perhaps a bit surprising given the enthusiasm they gave only a short while ago. They had been working on object analysis as well. So will we see new moves in this space? I expect it from Asia.
Intel is giving up on its smart…
From Schneier on Security
Lifting a Fingerprint from a Photo
Police in the UK were able to read a fingerprint from a photo of a hand: Staff from the unit's specialist imaging team were able to enhance a picture of a hand holding a number of tablets, which was taken from a mobile phone,…
From Computational Complexity
Memory is Hot
From Michael Jordan
Artificial Intelligence — The Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the mantra of the current era. The phrase is intoned by technologists, academicians, journalists and venture capitalists alike. As with many phrases that cross over from technical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Does Offline Translations
Looks impressive based on a demo I saw. We are closer yet to a universal, mobile and free Babel Fish. Was never expecting such a combination of features, the very basic idea seemed like fantasy not too long ago. 21 supported…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wikipedia Adds Preview Hover
Wikipedia adds a hover over page preview capability to make navigation easier. Been testing, a nice idea. Lets you make somewhat fewer clicks while you browse.
Navigating through Wikipedia articles on desktop just got a lot …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Your Data Has to be Good. Define Good.
Very good piece, covers lots of topics. Worth reading. Without enough quality data, you have nothing. Key elements of process, like getting everyone involved early and often. Biases mentioned, but the principle kinds of
If…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will GDPR Drive us Towards Real-time Analytics?
Some good thoughts on the implications. At its simplest will this mean we will need to use and release data more quickly? Thus data will become real time? At what cost of accuracy?
How GDPR Drives Real-Time Analytics In …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning and Chaos
Quite remarkable, if the results can be applied to real world engineering problems.
Machine Learning’s ‘Amazing’ Ability to Predict Chaos by By Natalie Wolchover in Quanta Mag
In new computer experiments, artificial-intelligence…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Developers Eye View of Smart Contracts
Its all about business rules. So its about rule based process. But why do it this way in particular rather than using rule bases and encrypted ledgers ? Case is made here. (Much more in full piece at the link)
Make your blockchain…
From BLOG@CACM
End Anonymous Refereeing
Who came up with this bizarre idea?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Proof at the Wikipedia
Roger Dooley writes about the approach of the Wikipedia fundraising. Many have seen their 'ads', as I have, when doing a Wikipedia search. The argument is " ... Many people use our service, but few contribute ... "
From the"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Holograms for Heads-up Displays
Have yet to see really practical and precise visualization via hologram.
Holograms Could Yield Next Wave of Heads-Up Displays
R&D Magazine By Kenny Walter
A functional prototype heads-up display using holographic optical elements…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Arrays, Loops, and Racing Horses
One of the things I like about using Visual Studio and C# (and Visual Basic for that matter) is the ability to easily create some fun graphical projects. I’ve been using variations of the horse race program for years now. I though…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Discovery Analytics Center
One former Alama Mater of mine has a discovery analytics center.
The Discovery Analytics Center brings together computer scientists, engineers, and statisticians to meet the research and workforce needs of today’s data-driven
About…
From insideHPC
Russian RSC Group deploys ‘hot water’ cooled supercomputer at JINR
Today the RSC Group from Russia announced the deployment of the world first 100% ‘hot water’ liquid cooled supercomputer at Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna. "It's great to note that we launch the new heterogeneous…
From insideHPC
Video: Addressing Key Science Challenges with Adversarial Neural Networks
Wahid Bhimji from NERSC gave this talk at the 2018 HPC User Forum in Tucson. "Machine Learning and Deep Learning are increasingly used to analyze scientific data, in fields as diverse as neuroscience, climate science and particle…
From insideHPC
David Kepczynski from GE to Chair ECP Industry Council
Today the Exascale Computing Project appointed David Kepczynski from GE Global Research as the new chair of the ECP Industry Council. “We are thrilled that Dave Kepczynski has agreed to take the leadership reins for the ECP’s…
From insideHPC
Introducing the SPEC High Performance Group and HPC Benchmark Suites
Robert Henschel from Indiana University gave this talk at the Swiss HPC Conference. "In this talk, I will present an overview of the High Performance Group as well as SPEC’s benchmarking philosophy in general. Most everyone knows…
From insideHPC
Cray Adopts AMD EPYC Processors for Supercomputing
Cray is the first system vendor to offer an optimized programing environment for AMD EYPC processors, which is a distinct advantage. "Cray's decision to offer the AMD EPYC processors in the Cray CS500 product line expands its…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity Colloquia
On March 12th-14th, the National Academies of Science held an Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia on Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity. The colloquia, organized by Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google and Innovation
Well put short piece.
The 5 Essential Ingredients of a Truly Innovative Team, According to Google
You can't force creativity, but you can create an environment that encourages it. Google has figured out how. ...
By Jessica Stillman…
From Schneier on Security
Oblivious DNS
Interesting idea: ...we present Oblivious DNS (ODNS), which is a new design of the DNS ecosystem that allows current DNS servers to remain unchanged and increases privacy for data in motion and at rest. In the ODNS system, both…
From Putting People First
[Book] The Qualified Self
![[Book] The Qualified Self](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life by Lee Humphreys MIT Press May 2018, 179 pages How sharing the mundane details of daily life did not start with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube but with pocket…
From Putting People First
[Book] The Qualified Self
The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life by Lee Humphreys MIT Press May 2018, 179 pages How sharing the mundane details of daily life did not start with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube but with pocket…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Assistants come to the Trading floor.
Another example where hands-free can be very useful, and you need information quickly. Adding an information channel.
JPMorgan Brings Amazon’s Alexa to Wall Street Trading Floors
By Hugh Son and Katherine Chiglinsky in Bloomberg…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Training The Next Generation of Computer Science Teachers
The biggest problem in computer science education is training the teachers we need. That seems to be the big thing on my social media in the last few days.
This past week was a major document release in New York of "Priming the…