Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2016
From insideHPC
Altair Acquires Electromagnetics Software Portfolio from CEDRAT
Today Altair announced the company has acquired CEDRAT S.A. and its New York-based wholly-owned subsidiary, Magsoft Corporation, expanding the electromagnetic and thermal simulation capabilities of its HyperWorks CAE portfolio…
From insideHPC
Diffusion Optimization on Intel Xeon Phi
"The next step is to look at using OpenMP directives to create multiple threads to distribute the work over many threads and cores. A key OpenMP directive, #pragma omp for collapse, will collapse the inner two loops into one.…
From ACM on Huffington Post
You Start 'Doing' Diversity by Using the Data
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Plans to Chirp the Echo
In NDTv: Rumors out there that Google and others will soon announce a challenger to the Amazon Echo. If anything Amazon has shown that consumers are interested in having help from talking virtual assistants. The players"…
From Phys.org Technology News
Explainer: How dangerous is turbulence, and can it bring down a plane?
If you have ever travelled on an aeroplane the chances are you have experienced some form of turbulence. For those of us who fly infrequently, it can be alarming and unnerving, but rest assured that for the pilots and crew who…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will this Computer Stop?
Fascinating experiment underway at MIT that addresses the deep math behind every computer. I remember programming my first simulated Turing machine. Set off a a deep 'aha' that has left me engaged. By Jacob Aron in New Scientist…
From Phys.org Technology News
New tech fuelling global boom in child sex tourism: study
Technology is transforming the global sex trade and making it easier than ever for travellers to prey on children, a landmark study on paedophiles warned Thursday.
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Gesture-Based Security
Interesting research: Abdul Serwadda, Vir V. Phoha, Zibo Wang, Rajesh Kumar, and Diksha Shukla, "Robotic Robbery on the Touch Screen," ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, May 2016. Abstract: Despite the tremendous…
From Phys.org Technology News
A sixth sense protects drivers except when texting
While much has been made about the dangers of texting and driving, less attention has been focused on the age-old distractions of being absent minded or upset while driving. A team of researchers from the University of Houston…
From XRDS
A Brief Survey on Software Recommendation Tools
Software engineering recommendation systems assist developers so that they can almost automatically find: 1) code snippets that match their programs, 2) appropriate APIs and libraries, 3) bug fixes, and 4) code changes. These…
From Schneier on Security
FTC Investigating Android Patching Practices
It's a known truth that most Android vulnerabilities don't get patched. It's not Google's fault. They release the patches, but the phone carriers don't push them down to their smartphone users. Now the Federal Communications…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple Must Move Beyond the Wow
In Knowledge@Wharton: Good piece.Why Apple Must Move Beyond the ‘Wow’ MomentApple’s disappointing second quarter earnings – including the first-ever drop in sales for the iPhone – sent the company’s stock tumbling for eight…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Process Assessment
This was new to me, but addressing measurement in services: Software-mediated Process Assessments (SMPA) in IT Service Management An Australian Research Council Linkage ProjectWas unaware of this, brought to my attention.
From insideHPC
OpenPOWER Summit Coming to Frankfurt June 16-17
The OpenPOWER Foundation is pleased to announce the first OpenPOWER Europe Summit taking place on June 16-17 in Frankfurt.
The post OpenPOWER Summit Coming to Frankfurt June 16-17 appeared first on insideHPC.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Reality, Game Design, and The Future of Education
A Favorite topic of mine on the CSIG call tomorrow: (See also the gamification tag below)" ... Just a reminder about our Cognitive Systems Institute Group Speaker Series on Thursday May 12, 2016 at 10:30 am ET US (7:30 am PT…
From insideHPC
NERSC Paper on Burst Buffers Recognized at Cray User Group
A new paper outlining NERSC's Burst Buffer Early User Program and the center’s pioneering efforts in recent months to test drive the technology using real science applications on Cori Phase 1 has won the Best Paper award at this…
From insideHPC
D-Wave Systems Launches Quantum for Quants Online Community
Today D-Wave Systems announced the launch of Quantum for Quants, an online community designed specifically for quantitative analysts and other experts focused on complex problems in finance. Launched at the Global Derivatives…
From insideHPC
Cowboy Supercomputer Powers Research at the Oklahoma State
In this video, Oklahoma State Director of HPC Dana Brunson describes how the Cowboy supercomputer powers research. "High performance computing, involves supercomputers for computational and data intensive research, a super computer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Shelf Availability
A common measure in retail. Out of stocks The ability to select replacements for your regular buy. A customer lost potentially forever? Then what is the bottom line.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Quantum Bayesian Networks
Brought to my attention by Robert Tucci. Now following. I have been mostly an observer of the development of quantum computing methods for years, helped some folks look at what kinds of problems would be most amenable to this…
From Schneier on Security
New Credit Card Scam
A criminal ring was arrested in Malaysia for credit card fraud: They would visit the online shopping websites and purchase all their items using phony credit card details while the debugging app was activated. The app would fetch…
From Phys.org Technology News
High-tech devices take cheating to new level in Thai schools
Glasses with embedded cameras and smartwatches with stored information seem like regular spy equipment for the likes of James Bond, but for three students applying to medical school in Thailand, they were high-technology cheating…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics and Organization
In McKinsey: " ... In a new survey, executives say senior-leader involvement and the right organizational structure are critical factors in how successful a company’s analytics efforts are, even more important than its technical…
From insideHPC
TGAC Installs Worlds Largest SGI UV 300 Supercomputer for Life Sciences
Today SGI announced the deployment of its largest SGI UV 300 supercomputer to data at The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in the UK. As one of the largest Intel SSD for PCIe*deployments worldwide, TGAC’s new supercomputing platform…
From insideHPC
Fujitsu to Build 25 Petaflop Supercomputer at JCAHPC in Japan
Today Fujitsu announced an order for a 25 Petaflop supercomputer system from the University of Tokyo and the University of Tsukuba. Powered by Intel Knights Landing processors, the "T2K Open Supercomputer" will be deployed to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Package Delivery by Drone?
In IEEE Spectrum. Google and package delivery by drone with project Wing. Implications for supply chains. Is this serious?
From Computational Complexity
Math lessons from the Donald Trump Nomination (non-political)
There may be articles titled Donald Trump and the Failure of Democracy. This is NOT one of them. This is about some math questions. I drew upon many sources but mostly Nate Silver's columns:Donald Trump's Six Stages of doom, …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Home Vacuum
In Spectrum IEEE: Extensive technical and practical review of the Neato Botvac. A robotic vacuuming solution for the home. We studied how narrowly focused robotics could be delivered to the home and the potential for onboard…
From insideHPC
Video: Enabling High-Performance Storage on OpenPOWER Systems
In this video from the 2016 OpenPOWER Summit, Stephen Bates of Microsemi presents: Enabling high-performance storage on OpenPOWER Systems. "Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), and the low latency access to storage it provides, is changing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More Accurate Translation with AI
In CACM: Teaching computers better translation with AI methods. " ... It is currently possible to translate words with high rates of accuracy via Google Translate, but this technique can still yield poor sentence structures…