Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning and Econometrics
Some excellent points being made here. Wth links to the talk and slides. " .... Hal Varian is the chief economist at Google and gave a talk to Electronic Support Group at EECS Department at the University of California at Berkeley…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Office Mix and Binary Numbers
One of the things I worked on this year was sharing resources with students. I uploaded all my PowerPoint presentations to our learning management system for example. And I created some video demos which I loaded on YouTube and…
From Apophenia
San Francisco’s (In)Visible Class War
In 2003, I was living in San Francisco and working at a startup when I overheard a colleague of mine — a self-identified libertarian — spout off about “the homeless problem.” I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I’m sure…
From Computational Complexity
CCC 2014
I'm returning from the 2014 IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity in Vancouver, unfortunately missing the last day. Several very nice talks including a wonderful survey by Shubhangi Saraf on recent problems on lower bounds…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Sponsors Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at Foundations of Software Engineering 2014
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is sponsoring another track in its Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track series at the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), November 16-22, …
From Schneier on Security
Seventh Movie-Plot Threat Contest Winner
On April 1, I announced the Seventh Mostly Annual Movie-Plot Threat Contest: The NSA has won, but how did it do it? How did it use its ability to conduct ubiquitous surveillance, its massive data centers, and its advanced data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Assistants are Watson
ComputerWorld looks at the virtual assistant mode for Watson. As we discovered in the 90s, its not about replacing people but making them more effective. All the systems we wrote did that.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Hour of Code 2014
The latest announcement from code.org hit my email inbox yeterday. Looks like they are planning for a bigger better "Hour of Code" for CS education week this fall.
The Hour of Code is coming... again! December 8-14
Thanks…From The Eponymous Pickle
NASA Robot Challenge
In CWorld: An interesting view of challenge vs failure. " ... At NASA's robot challenge, don't mistake trouble for failure ... Teams struggle in autonomous robotics challenge but advances are made ... "
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Key to Future BI
Gartner and Spotfire on Future BI: It is a key point, what is the data worth, now and in the future? " ... Many business intelligence (BI) vendors and CIOs have positioned big data analysis to focus on data reporting. They…
From The Eponymous Pickle
China AliBaba in US
In Retailwire: Some interesting Chinese movements into the US: " ,,, Being China's largest e-commerce company means that Alibaba is no slouch. But that doesn't mean the company's first site in the U.S. will roll over the likes…
From Computational Complexity
Wassily Hoeffding 1914-1991
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wassily Hoeffding today, let's recall his incredibly useful inequality.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Sponsors Blue Sky Ideas Track at AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is sponsoring another track in its Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track series at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence on January 25-29, 2015 in Austin, Texas.The “Senior Member Presentation…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Good Things Are Happening in APCS
The Advanced Placement Computer Science exam was graded last week. Well the free response part was anyway. I had a number of friends there and got some news from them. There was also some APCSA 2014 Exam info from Trevor Packer…
From Schneier on Security
Censorship in China
First-person experience of censorship in China....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Molecular Self Assembly
A new kind of scale up? How practical could this be for electronic manufacturing applications? " ... Finnish and Italian researchers have developed a way to align molecular self-assemblies from nanometers to millimeters, an…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tech Wearables
In Retailwire: Going mainstream, it says. I still think there will be delay due to the un developed link between fashion statement and communications. It is not quite the same as holding a device, which we have all gotten…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Compact Nuclear Power
IEEE, A perhaps unexpected small power source:" ... Boston-based UPower Technologies thinks it can reinvent nuclear power by going small and ditching the predominant light-water design. Its reactor, whose contents would fit…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Proof Envy
I wish I could have used Theorem X… IISC centenarysource Vijaya Ramachandran is now the Blakemore Regents Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. Once upon a time she was my PhD student, at Princeton…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Proof Envy
I wish I could have used Theorem X… IISC centenary source Vijaya Ramachandran is now the Blakemore Regents Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. Once upon a time she was my PhD student, at Princeton…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Community Consortium Announces New Council Members and Executive Committee
The Computing Research Association (CRA), in consultation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), has appointed six new members to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council: Lorenzo Alvisi, University of Texas at Austin…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CSTA Annual Conference Reminder
If you haven't yet registered for the CSTA Annual Conference, time is running short. The conference takes place in St. Charles, Illinois (west of Chicago) on July 14-15. The deadline for reduced-rate housing is June 13 and …
From Schneier on Security
Feedly Victim of DDOS Blackmail
So far they're resisting. Evernote and Deezer are also suffering attacks. I haven't seen anything linking the three different victims, and the other two have not said anything about extortion demands....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Instacart Shared Economy
Instacart brings "sharing economy" model to the supermarket. In the NYT.Instacart is bringing a business model of the "sharing economy" to the supermarket, using a mobile application to connect customers with individuals who…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Learning How Memories are Made
We continue to slowly learn how memories are planted in the brain. This could further lead to the stronger interaction between brain and machine. In Nature: " ... Neuroscientists can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Experiments…
From The Eponymous Pickle
BOI Solutions at Ten Years and Beyond
I have now worked with them for years. BOI Solutions brings together expertise in IT, Multi-media components, content delivery technology, networks and automated control to integrate a solution for any application.From boardrooms…
From Schneier on Security
iOS 8 is Randomizing MAC Addresses
This seems like a good idea....
From Schneier on Security
Security Risks from Remote Controlled Smart Devices
We're starting to see a proliferation of smart devices that can be controlled from your phone. The security risk is, of course, that anyone can control them from their phones. Like this Japanese smart toilet: The toilet, manufactured…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Chatbots Tricking You
In the BBC: This is not new, has been going on for some time, but there is a new level of sophistication being seen. This is also related to the recent Turing Test announcements. A system that seeks to win that test is a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dell Diversifies the Supply Chain
I have not looked at Dell Computer for some time, was reintroduced to some of their high performance computing offerings. And here, more about their supply chain. " ... As a business diversifies, it may need more than one…