Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2018
From BLOG@CACM
Teaching Two Programming Languages in the First CS Course
Should we teach two different programming languages in the first CS course? Probably not -- here's what we know.
From insideHPC
Mentorship fosters a Career in STEM
In this special guest feature, Faith Singer-Villalobos from TACC continues her series profiling Careers in STEM. It's the inspiring story of Je'aime Powell, a TACC System Administrator and XSEDE Extended Collaborative Support…
From insideHPC
HPC and Precision Medicine: A New Framework for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
Joe Lombardo from UNLV gave this talk at the HPC User Forum. "The University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health have been awarded an $11 million federal grant from the National Institutes…
From insideHPC
Altair and Cray Extend HPC Collaboration
Today Altair announced a 3-year extension to its OEM agreement with Cray Inc. Under the terms of this agreement, PBS Professional will remain bundled as the preferred commercial scheduler on new systems manufactured and shipped…
From insideHPC
Micron Now Shipping Quad-Level Cell NAND SSDs
"Today Micron Technology announced the company is shipping the industry’s first SSD built on revolutionary quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology. The Micron 5210 ION SSD provides 33 percent more bit density than triple-level
…
From Schneier on Security
Another Spectre-Like CPU Vulnerability
Google and Microsoft researchers have disclosed another Spectre-like CPU side-channel vulnerability, called "Speculative Store Bypass." Like the others, the fix will slow the CPU down. The German tech site Heise reports that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Makes Chat calls in China
More word of call-making chatbots, akin to recently announced Google Duplex. Ultimately you will have to have such systems communicating, with people and other systems, but the implications need to be thought through. Will…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Geographic Optimization with Bayesian Networks
Had not seen this kind of optimization before with Bayesian Networks. Webinar leads you through the process, largely non-technical.
... By Stefan Conrady,,
Managing Partner at Bayesia USA & Singapore: Bayesian Networks for Research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pets and Machine Learning Interactions
In Pete Warden's Blog, interesting views. Have seen some of that in my own menagerie of chatbots and responsive assistants. But I think ultimately we will want assistant than amusement. Machine learning is collaborative…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the rise of the Chatbots
HPE provides an a good, non technical view. Conversational intelligence and its increasing acceptance. Obstacles will be maintaining the underlying knowledge.
Conversational AI and the rise of the chatbots
It’s important to understand…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Synthetic Data
Companies may often have mixes of real and synthetic data, early on we used simulations to create streams of data that were realistic for particular context. Synthetic data can also be assembled from snippets of data from other…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Uses SmartLabel Platform
P&G is leader in using means to get to details about thousands of their products.
P&G using technology to peel back curtain on thousands of products on the shelf
By Andy Brownfield – Reporter, Cincinnati Business Courier
Cincinnati…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Science and Machine Learning for Healthcare
To be updated ...
Cognitive Systems Institute Talk Join us.
24 May 2018: 10:30 AM, ET (Access Instructions below)
Talk by: Farah Shamout
Title: “Data Science and Machine Learning for Healthcare”
Abstract: (Will be placed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hacking Back: An Active Defense
Interesting thought, but am not sure I would want to get into the battle with the hackers. Still may be a place someone will have to go to provide an active defense. Intriguing thoughts that include both hacking and business…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sharepoint Virtual Reality
We experimented with similar ideas. How do you immerse yourself in messy data? In information architecture. We never thought of Sharepoint as a place to start, though we were an MS shop with lots of data of many kinds there…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Acer Ships with Alexa
Seems to hurt Cortana, but Cortana will also be installed on these same machines along with Windows 10. But as mentioned, Cortana has been poorly marketed, especially as to its value to support particular consumer needs. Paul…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI for Smart Houses
The AI we are using today is simplistic, where will it grow?
Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence Leading the Way to Smart Houses
In the Baylor Lariat (TX) By Samantha Amaro
Baylor University researchers are studying deep learning…
From insideHPC
Call for Submissions: IO500 List
The Virtual Institute for IO is now accepting submissions for the upcoming IO500 list, which will be revealed at ISC 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany. "The IO500 benchmark suite is designed to be easy to run and the community has multiple…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Call for Applications – CCC Leadership in Embedded Security Workshop
The Cybersecurity Taskforce of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will host a leadership workshop to envision the future of embedded security research on August 13th in Baltimore, Maryland. Embedded systems such as pacemakers…
From BLOG@CACM
Articulation of Decision Responsibility
Can we establish a locution for the results of a program that does not ascribe decision-making power?
From Schneier on Security
Japan's Directorate for Signals Intelligence
The Intercept has a long article on Japan's equivalent of the NSA: the Directorate for Signals Intelligence. Interesting, but nothing really surprising. The directorate has a history that dates back to the 1950s; its role is…
From insideHPC
Call for Applications: NCSA GPU Hackathon in September
NCSA is now accepting team applications for the Blue Waters GPU Hackathon. This event will take place September 10-14, 2018 in Illinois. "General-purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) potentially offer exceptionally high…
From insideHPC
Data Compression Optimized with Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives
Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel IPP) offers the developer a highly optimized, production-ready, library for lossless data compression/decompression that targets image, signal, and data processing, and cryptography…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Buys Semantic Machines
Towards more conversational machines. We spent many years trying to figure out how analytics, systems and machines could better 'understand' the meaning of data. Now this will be essential to lead to better conversational interaction…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Replacing Powerpoint with Narratives
Stories are good, when constructed well. What if you just want the essential and concise points to carry away. Narrative also has the stronger possibility of Confirmation Bias. Its a good story, so its real, true? And the…
From insideHPC
Unified Deep Learning Configurations and Emerging Applications
This is the final post in a five-part series from a report exploring the potential machine and a variety of computational approaches, including CPU, GPU and FGPA technologies. This article explores unified deep learning configurations…
From insideHPC
Japan Meteorological Agency to deploy Two Cray XC50 Supercomputers
Today Cray announced that the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) is implementing two Cray XC50 supercomputers at its site in Kiyose, Tokyo. These systems are expected to deliver a combined peak performance of more than 18 petaflops…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teaching the History of Computing
History is important. We’ve all heard, if not quoted, the adage that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Mark Guzdial has a blog post (Computer science education is far bigger than maker education)“What…
From Computational Complexity
COMPUTER PROOF vs computer proof- Quadratic VDW theorem
Quad VDW Theorem: For all c there exists W=W(c) such that for all c-colorings of {1,...,W} there exists a,d such that a and a+d2 are the same color.
What is known about W(c)?
The first proof of Quad VDW was nonconstructive.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Diapers Design with Sensors
Used to work at a company that competed in this space. In Design, manufacturing and marketing. Will this compete?
Alphabet’s Verily has a “smart diaper“ design that distinguishes pee from poo Beyond simple moisture detectors…