Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2020
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM's Sterling Supply Chain Business Network
IBM reports on a new supply chain effort:
Build a smarter supply chain for tomorrow
Digital business and globalization continuously disrupt today’s business. Customers expect what they want, when and where they want it.
IBM® Sterling…
From Schneier on Security
Microsoft Buys Corp.com
A few months ago, Brian Krebs told the story of the domain corp.com, and how it is basically a security nightmare: At issue is a problem known as "namespace collision," a situation where domain names intended to be used exclusively…
From Putting People First
[Paper] The Imaginary Crisis
![[Paper] The Imaginary Crisis](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
As the Covid-19 crisis hopefully comes slowly under control, we ought to attend to a very different kind of crisis, and one which is scarcely visible: the deteriorating state of our shared social imagination.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Researchers Respond to COVID-19: Decontaminating N95 Masks
Contributions to this post were provided by former CCC Council Member Kevin Fu from the University of Michigan. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused staggering resource shortages around the world. A lack of personal protective equipment…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Preparation is the Most Important Thing
A very good O'Reilly piece, not very technical. Essential thoughts.
The unreasonable importance of data preparation
Your models are only as good as your data.
By Hugo Bowne-Anderson in O'Reilly
Edit note: We know data preparation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cobol: Its Still Here
Surprised to see this, but should not be. Its still around in many forms.
New Jersey Needs Volunteers Who Know COBOL, a 60-Year-Old Programming Language
CNBC
By Kif Leswing
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has called for volunteers…
From insideHPC
APAC HPC-AI Competition Expands to Address COVID-19
The HPC-AI Advisory Council and the National Supercomputing Centre in Singapore announced today that they have joined the global fight against COVID-19 by expanding the 2020 APAC HPC-AI competition to address education and applied…
From insideHPC
HPE Financial Services Offers $2 billion in Financing and New Programs to Help Customers and Partners Weather COVID-19
Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced today that HPE Financial Services (HPEFS) is designating more than $2 billion in financing specifically to help customers with their financial challenges stemming from the COVID-19 crisis,…
From insideHPC
Video: What Does it Take to Reach 2 Exaflops?
In this video, Addison Snell from Intersect360 Research moderates a panel discussion on the El Capitan supercomputer. With a peak performance of over 2 Exaflops, El Capitan will be roughly 10x faster than today’s fastest supercomputer…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
When Are We Going Back To (bricks and mortar) School?
That’s the question my students asked the most yesterday. We’re in our fourth week of remote emergency teaching and I think it is starting to wear on most of us. It especially hard on the young people though. One thing I am more…
From insideHPC
ISC 2020 Conference Converting to Virtual Event Due to Pandemic
The ISC 2020 Conference in Frankfurt has been cancelled due to the global pandemic and instead will be broadcast as a virtual event. "It is with a heavy heart we announce our decision to cancel ISC 2020 in Frankfurt, Germany,"…
From Putting People First
Imagining the world after coronavirus, part 3
Third edition of features and articles on what may lie ahead. Four in English, three in Italian.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fingerprint Cloning?
I recall this came up when we set up our innovation labs. Retails suggested it was much discussed at the time. It was ultimately discounted because it was too hard to do. Seems things have changed. Via the Cisco blog …
From insideHPC
NVIDIA Becomes a Shareholder in DFKI AI Research Center in Germany
Today NVIDIA announced that that company has become a shareholder in DFKI, one of world’s largest research centers dedicated to AI. "We want to provide infrastructure that’s a platform for both the German and the broader European…
From Schneier on Security
RSA-250 Factored
RSA-250 has been factored. This computation was performed with the Number Field Sieve algorithm, using the open-source CADO-NFS software. The total computation time was roughly 2700 core-years, using Intel Xeon Gold 6130 CPUs…
From Putting People First
Can UX be done online? Yes AND No
Frank Spillers of Experience Dynamics reviews key UX activities and deliverables to assess online strategies for maintaining your UX process quality when online is your only option.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Automates Supplier Negotiations
Procurement and related supplier contracts and negotiations addressed with AI type methods:
Walmart automates supplier negotiations
By Dan Berthiaume - 03/26/2020 in ChainstoreAge
Walmart is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI)…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Living in Interesting Times and Sharing Thinking
You may have noticed I didn’t post anything in this blog yesterday. Part of that is because I had to make an unexpected trip to my family’s vacation home. A neighbor reported an open window and we can’t have that. It was weird…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Researchers Respond to COVID-19: Staying Connected
The following is a guest blog post from Computing Community Consortium (CCC) council member Jennifer Rexford from Princeton University. Over the past few weeks, as I shelter in place like so many of us, I am increasingly grateful…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Publix Goes Contactless
Contactless payment influenced by virus fears?
Publix Goes Contactless
By Bridget Goldschmidt - 04/03/2020 in ProgressiveGrocer
Contactless payment station in a Tampa, Fla., Publix store
Publix Super Markets is offering a contactless…
From The Eponymous Pickle
When Will the Jobs Return?
On many people's minds. even if you don't need a job, the economy will be greatly influenced depending how jobs are filled, or not. Will this be an opportunity to replace workers with tech?
When Will the Jobs Return? In …
From insideHPC
Newly named Ethernet Technology Consortium Announces 800 Gigabit Ethernet Specification
The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium, originally established to develop 25, 50 and 100 Gbps Ethernet specifications, announced today it has changed its name to the Ethernet Technology Consortium in order to reflect a new focus
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Content Management and Consumption
Thoughtful site by a correspondent of mine ...
Rethink Content Management to Include the UX of Content Consumption
By Sunnie Southern, MS, RDN, LDN
Enabling health and life sciences to effectively leverage the cloud. Google Partner…
From insideHPC
Intel Commits $50 Million to Pandemic Response Technology Inititative
Today, Intel pledged an additional $50 million in a pandemic response technology initiative to combat the coronavirus through accelerating access to technology at the point of patient care, speeding scientific research and ensuring…
From insideHPC
The true cost of AI innovation
"As the world’s attention has shifted to climate change, the field of AI is beginning to take note of its carbon cost. Research done at the Allen Institute for AI by Roy Schwartz et al. raises the question of whether efficiency…
From insideHPC
Fugaku Supercomputer joins fight against COVID-19
Today RIKEN in Japan announced that the partially finished Fugaku supercomputer will be made available for research projects aimed to combat COVID-19. The installation of the new supercomputer began in December 2019, and it is…
From Schneier on Security
Cybersecurity During COVID-19
Three weeks ago (could it possibly be that long already?), I wrote about the increased risks of working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. One, employees are working from their home networks and sometimes from their home…
From insideHPC
Video: Profiling Python Workloads with Intel VTune Amplifier
Paulius Velesko from Intel gave this talk at the ALCF Many-Core Developer Sessions. "This talk covers efficient profiling techniques that can help to dramatically improve the performance of code by identifying CPU and memory
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
McKinsey on Supply Chain Recovery
Essential for us to catch up on for the next event.
Supply-chain recovery in coronavirus times—plan for now and the future
Actions taken now to mitigate impacts on supply chains from coronavirus can also build resilience against…
From Universal Acceptance Steering Group
New Resource for Developers! Introducing the Universal Acceptance Readiness Framework
By Dennis Tan Tanaka, Vice Chair of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) Universal Acceptance (UA) is the simple concept that all domain names and all email addresses work across all applications. But identifying if…