Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2017
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track held at AAMAS 2017
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at the Sixteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MutliAgent Systems (AAMAS), May 8-12, 2017 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.…
From Schneier on Security
ICE is Using Stingray to Track Illegal Immigrants
According to court documents, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using Stingray cell-site simulators to track illegal immigrants....
From insideHPC
Transaction Processing Performance Council Launches TPCx-HS Big Data Benchmark
Today the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) announced the immediate availability of TPCx-HS Version 2, extending the original benchmark’s scope to include the Spark execution framework and cloud services. "Enterprise…
From insideHPC
Why Summer of HPC is an Experience to Remember
The Summer of HPC is a PRACE program that offers summer placements at HPC centres across Europe. “I was part of the Laboratory of Computer-Aided Design at the University of Ljubljana, working on data visualization for nuclear…
From insideHPC
SPEC High-Performance Group Seeking Applications for New MPI Accelerator Benchmark
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.'s High-Performance Group (SPEC/HPG) is offering rewards of up to $5,000 and a free benchmark license for application code and datasets accepted under its new SPEC MPI Accelerator Benchmark…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grafana for Time Series
Brought to my attention. Grafana.
" ... The leading open source software for time series analytics ... Grafana is an open source metric analytics & visualization suite. It is most commonly used for visualizing time series data…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Counting exactly the number of distinct elements: sorted arrays vs. hash sets?
Suppose that you have ever larger sets of 64-bit integers, and you want to quickly find out how many distinct integers there are. So given {10, 12, 10, 16}, you want an algorithm to output 3, as there are three distinct integers…
From insideHPC
Kimberly Keeton from HPE Presents: Memory-Driven Computing
Kimberly Keeton from HPE gave this talk at the MSST Conference. "Data growth and data analytics requirements are outpacing the compute and storage technologies that have provided the foundation of processor-driven architectures…
From BLOG@CACM
Opening Ceremony Kicks Off ACM-ICPC as Competition Nears
Hundreds of people gathered in the theater at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City, S.D., on Monday (May 22) as students, coaches, and community members attended the 2017 ACM-ICPC Opening Ceremony.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digital Twin Technology
Mostly about hardware, saw it well described by GE Digital at our recent meeting. Gets closer to understanding the process. But how do you include the actions of human actors?
Via Bernard Marr in Forbes:
" ... While the concept…
From insideHPC
Reliability, scalability and performance – the Impact of Intel HPC Orchestrator
When it comes to getting the performance out of your HPC system, it’s the small things that count. David Lombard, Sr. Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation, explains. " Intel HPC Orchestrator encapsulates the important tradeoffs…
From Schneier on Security
The Future of Ransomware
Ransomware isn't new, but it's increasingly popular and profitable. The concept is simple: Your computer gets infected with a virus that encrypts your files until you pay a ransom. It's extortion taken to its networked extreme…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Deep Algo Visualizes Code Process
Always thought there should be a easy way to better visualize the process of code. There have been attempts. Is this finally it? Much like the idea, transparency for decision makers. Consider the potential savings. Extracting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Algorithmic Gastronomy and Beyond
Fascinating look about how to morph recipes. Might this be used to rewrite other process + ingredient kinds of decisions? We were influenced in coffee blending and roasting decisions by recipe style approaches. There is something…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Andreessen Horowitz's AI Playbook
New, examining.
AI Playbook by the Andreessen Horowitz VC firm.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a set of computer science techniques that, as Stanford professor Andrew Ng is fond of saying, gives your software super powers.
Building…
From Schneier on Security
North Korean Cyberwar Capabilities
Reuters has an article on North Korea's cyberwar capabilities, specifically "Unit 180." They're still not in the same league as the US, UK, Russia, China, and Israel. But they're getting better....
From BLOG@CACM
Gaming and Touring Prep Students For Programming Contest
Students and coaches are exploring local attractions, playing competitive games, and attending the Competitive Learning Symposium in advance of the 2017 ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Considering the Data Science Behind AI
Nicely done piece from DSC by William Vorhies, an overview. Good exec and introductory piece. Like in general the way this is presented. Would add that I have started to call it Augmented Intelligence (AI), which tempers…
From insideHPC
Bright Cluster Manager Adds BeeGFS Support
Today Bright Computing announced support for the BeeGFS parallel file system into Bright Cluster Manager 8.0. BeeGFS, developed at the Fraunhofer Center for High Performance Computing in Germany and delivered by ThinkParQ, is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nestle and Startup Innovation
Via former P&Ger and colleague, Pete Blackshaw.
Nestle takes cues from Silicon Valley to boost innovation
Despite having thousands of product lines in its portfolio, Nestle uses a startup mindset adapted from Silicon Valley firms…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Assistants Understanding Accents
Quite a long article with many links in Language Log, on research that has been done on understanding accents. And how this may influence our work with assistants. It has intrigued me as to how we adapt to foreign accents
"…
From BLOG@CACM
ACM-ICPC Has Outgrown Its Humble Start
The ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition draws the best collegiate programmers from around the world, but it started as a humble statewide competition.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Jobs and Technologies
Seems an odd premise, is it the underlying responsibility of companies to create jobs? Or allow the market to do that? Starting in the 60s, many jobs have been replaced by technologies. In the HBR:
As Machines Take Jobs,…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at the TPU2 TensorFlow Processing Unit
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the announcements coming from Google IO conference. Of particular interest was their second-generation TensorFlow Processing Unit (TPU2). We've also got news on the new OS/2 operating…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart E-Commerce Surge
In Adage:
Walmart's E-Commerce Surge and Other Takeaways for Brands
By Jack Neff.
Walmart reported fiscal first-quarter earnings today that showed a huge spike in e-commerce sales as it slightly beat analyst expectations on the"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Home Automation Virtual Agent
Interesting approach that I had not seen .... highlighting the Watson conversation service.
Build a Home Automation Virtual Agent on Bluemix
With the home automation trend growing, have you wondered how you could build your own…
From insideHPC
PASC17 to Feature Panel Discussions on Moore’s Law and Computational Sciences
The upcoming PASC17 conference has posted further details on a pair of panel discussions taking place at the conference next month. The conference takes place June 26-28 in Lugano, Switzerland.
The post PASC17 to Feature Panel…
From BLOG@CACM
International Competitors Head to Rapid City For ACM-ICPC
Finalist teams from around the world descended on Rapid City, South Dakota this past weekend for the ACM-ICPC World Finals. Sightseeing and some cultural adjustments were in order.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A Rural Lens on a Research Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure
We hear all about “smart cities” but what about smart rural communities? We cannot forget about our rural populations, which we depend on for agriculture, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, and mining. Recently, the Computing…
From insideHPC
PSSC Labs Launches Eco Blades for HPC
The Eco Blade is a unique server platform engineered specifically for high performance, high density computing environments – simultaneously increasing compute density while decreasing power use. Eco Blade offers two complete…