Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2017
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (June 2nd, 2017)
Methylene blue rejuvenates old skin. You can buy methylene blue on Amazon and spray it on your face. It is reportedly safe, even in high concentration. Of course, you are likely to turn blue. A school in the UK is offering aContinue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Speakers as a Shopping Tool?
Interesting stats in article below. Though I suggest that once you get someone using the device, say for streaming music (60%), moving them to engaging with commerce is more likely. Also, suggest that the 60% represents
Are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Adds Natural Language to Sheets
This seems to be a one-way interaction, not a conversation. And how often the system will understand the typed query is unclear. But it could make simple interactions easier than constructing equations. Can easily be a skill…
From insideHPC
Seagate Self-Encrypting Drives now available through Carahsoft
Today Seagate Government Solutions announced that Carahsoft has become an approved distributer of the company's Secure Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs). Designed to help Protect Data At Rest (DAR), Seagate SEDs are used to mitigate…
From insideHPC
Armughan Ahmad on how Dell EMC is Driving High Performance Computing
In this video from the Dell EMC HPC Community meeting, Armughan Ahmad describes how the company is delivering world-class HPC solutions together with its partners and customers. "I lead a global team at Dell EMC that is focused…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Little Ideas for Innovation
Like to see thoughts coming out of someone who is thinking about decisions and operations, rather than just magical neural-inspired mappings.
How ‘Little Ideas’ Can Lead to Powerful Innovations
When most people hear the word innovation…
From insideHPC
Call for Presentations: MVAPICH User Group Meeting (MUG)
The MVAPICH User Group Meeting (MUG) has issued its Call for Presentations. As the annual gathering of MVAPICH2 users, researchers, developers, and system administrators, the MUG event includes Keynote Talks, Invited Tutorials…
From insideHPC
Vendor Panel: The Changing Landscape of HPC
In this video from the PBS Works User Group 2017, Rich Brueckner from insideHPC moderates a vendor panel on The Changing Landscape of HPC. "When it comes down to it, the HPC community depends on a healthy ecosystem. In this panel…
From insideHPC
Intel Omni-Path Architecture: A Focus on Application Performance
The Intel Omni-Path Architecture is the next-generation fabric for high-performance computing. In this feature, we will explore what makes a great HPC fabric and the workings behind Intel Omni-Path Architecture. "What makes a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Commercial Uses of Geofencing
Have not looked at this recently, but was brought up when looking at autonomous Drone applications. Good example list in the article.
Geofencing: 7 commercial and industrial use cases by Matias Wolff In Prey.
Geofencing technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Advances in China
Have followed Baidu and Alibaba for some time. They have benefited from Google's TensorFlow showing the way, and vast amounts of data. In Wired:
AI—Not Just American
" ... Chinese companies like Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba are…
From Schneier on Security
WannaCry and Vulnerabilities
There is plenty of blame to go around for the WannaCry ransomware that spread throughout the Internet earlier this month, disrupting work at hospitals, factories, businesses, and universities. First, there are the writers of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bob Herbold: IBM Spending
My former colleague Bob Herbold, on IBM spending and results. In his always gutsy blog:
IBM: Spent $97 Billion; Result: 20 Consecutive Quarterly Declines!
The primary job of a leader is to constantly assess the situation, develop…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Roadmap for the Programmable World.
Considerable article from IEEE Software, via InfoQ .....
A Roadmap to the Programmable World
Posted by Antero Taivalsaari, Tommi Mikkonen ....
Key Takeaways
- The emergence of IoT means our everyday things—light bulbs, door…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Commercial Supersonic Jet Engines
In The Bike Shop:
" ... Going supersonic
Brad Mottier, vice president and general manager of GE Aviation Business and General Aviation and Integrated Systems, kicked off EBACE on Sunday by announcing a partnership with Aerion Corporation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Understanding Classification Performance
And as long as you are doing any kind of machine learning, here classification, you need to measure and understand its performance. Since I am doing that now, I noted Jason Brownlee's piece noted below:
How to Report Classifier…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Random Forests Explained
A look at the method of Random Forests: Random Forests Explained Intuitively. Posted by Manish Kumar Barnwal. If not quite intuitive, relatively non-technical. With some related code to follow. A kind of ensemble classification…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Great Innovative Idea- Progressing Intention Progression: A Call for a Goal-Plan Tree Contest
The following Great Innovative Idea is from Brian Logan (University of Nottingham), John Thangarajah (RMIT University), and Neil Yorke-Smith (American University of Beirut). Their paper called Progressing Intention Progression…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Need Funds to Attend the CSTA Conference?
OK this is an opportunity too good to pass up if you are a K12 computer science teacher. Seriously.
If you are a K12 teacher, then Rolls Royce wants to help get you to the conference in STYLE!
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics and Workflow
Workflow, or sometimes called process .... whether B2B or B2C makes sense to understand it before looking for tools.
Analytics and Workflow By Denis Pombriant
" ... At this point in a client discussion, I usually ask people to…
From Schneier on Security
Passwords at the Border
The password-manager 1Password has just implemented a travel mode that tries to protect users while crossing borders. It doesn't make much sense. To enable it, you have to create a list of passwords you feel safe traveling with…
From insideHPC
Cycle Computing’s Tim Carroll on how Dell EMC Powers Cloud HPC
In this video from the Dell EMC HPC Community meeting, Tim Carroll from Cycle Computing describes how the company makes it easier to move big HPC workloads to the Cloud with the help of Dell EMC. "Dell EMC has embraced the notion…
From insideHPC
Plugfest Demonstrates Fibre Channel Capabilities for NVMe Storage
"The successful conclusion of this event provides assurance to the FC SAN community that the draft version of the FC-NVMe standard specification combined with the NVMe fabric specifications meets the demanding performance and…
From insideHPC
AMAX Showcases Virtualization Solutions for GPUs at GTC 2017
In this video from GTC 2017, Dr. Rene Meyer from AMAX describes the company's innovative virtualization solutions for GPU computing. "What we are showcasing here is a very interesting solution—a hardware/software solution. We…
From insideHPC
Jump Start your Immersive Video Experiences
Sponsored Post Imagine viewing video on your cell phone, tablet, laptop or TV of an event, either in the past or live where you feel like you are “there”. While immersive VR requires significant amount of hardware, everyone
…
From insideHPC
Thomas Zacharia named director of Oak Ridge National Lab
Today UT-Battelle announced that Thomas Zacharia, who helped build Oak Ridge National Laboratory into a global supercomputing power, has been selected as the laboratory’s next director. "Thomas has a compelling vision for the…
From Computational Complexity
Who Sets Policy?
In April the New York Times Magazine ran an article Is it O.K. to Tinker with the Environment to Fight Climate Change? The article asks about the ethics of even running tests on such methods and has this quote froms David Battisti…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Agents as Selvesware
Correspondent Michael Schrage on the nature of help by virtual agents. It used to be these took over a kind of 'executive assistant' role. Got to see these in action, and at their best they were better than the execs themselves…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
How To Make Computers Work For People Like You
Years ago I was giving a career talk in Roxbury (a heavily minority neighborhood in Boston) to a group of students. At the end a young African American woman asked me why I, a middle aged white male was interested in seeing more…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Linking Ads in Search to Offline Purchase
Quite a revolutionary thing happening this week, Google indicates that it can link an advertisement in their systems directly to off-line purchases. Enabled by transaction analysis. Leading to better measurement of success…