Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
BBC Micro Bit Computer, Design and Intent
Teaching detailed computing to kids. I like the idea.In the BBC: The BBC has revealed the final design of the Micro Bit, a pocket-sized computer set to be given to about one million UK-based children in October. ....The BBC's…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Job Announcement: Technology Policy Analyst
Prestigious educational, scientific, not-for-profit society for computing professionals seeks a highly motivated Policy Analyst to support its policy and government affairs team. This full-time position in Washington, D.C. offers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Reality and Nausea
In the CACM: Using virtual reality head mounted devices can give you motion sickness. An important negative for using VR, The article also contains a very good explanation of why the nausea occurs for some people. Stanford…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
It’s Worth A Try–Or Is It?
Read this: Hacking Team asked its customers to shut down operations, but according to one of the leaked files, as part of Hacking Team's "crisis procedure," it could have killed their operations remotely. The company, in fact… Intriguing application of the little known Benford's law. A data science means for indicating falsified data. I am a follower of its application in practice. Could it have been used to prevent the Greece financial crisis?
From Schneier on Security
More on Hacking Team
From The Eponymous Pickle
Benford's Law and Greece in the EU
From insideHPC
Slidecast: Numascale Achieves Record STREAM Benchmark
In this slidecast, Einar Rustad from Numascale describes how the company achieved a world-record on the McCalpin STREAM benchmark using their innovative scale-out to scale-up architecture. The benchmark measures sustainable memory…
From insideHPC
HPC Transforms for Researchers of Global Climate Change
"HPC is transforming our everyday lives, as well as our not-so-ordinary ones. From nanomaterials to jet aircrafts, from medical treatments to disaster preparedness, and even the way we wash our clothes; the HPC community has …
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Upcoming CCC Blue Sky Idea Tracks
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsors an initiative to bring special “Blue Sky Ideas” tracks to leading computer science research conferences. The goal of this initiative is to help conferences reach out beyond the…
From insideHPC
ScaleMP Teams with Lenovo on Big Memory Systems
Today ScaleMP announced it is teaming with leading vendors at the ISC 2015 in Frankfurt to showcase the ability of very large memory systems to handle the most demanding memory-intensive applications.
The post ScaleMP Teams with…From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data, Data Visualization meet Hollerith
Surprise, this this hype cycle has happened before. In fact several times. Fascinating history Big data: The 100-year-old buzzword" .. the truth is that data has been hot for 100 years and the challenges to see it and understand…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Consolidating Ad Agencies
In AdAge: Seems to be an approach that is common, these days in the large enterprise, decreasing complexity. At what point will this complexity seriously include cognitive methods?
From insideHPC
Rolls-Royce Joins JISC Industrial Supercomputing Initiative
Today JISC in the U.K. announced that Rolls-Royce is the first company to join its industrial supercomputing initiative. Designed to break down barriers between industry and academia, JISC will provide Rolls-Royce with easy access…
From insideHPC
Nvidia Speeds Up Deep Learning Software
Today Nvidia updated its GPU-accelerated deep learning software to accelerate deep learning training performance. With new releases of DIGITS and cuDNN, the new software provides significant performance enhancements to help data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Human Machine Symbiosis
A favorite topic. Not only how will robotic machines do our work, but how will they effectively collaborate with humans to do that work. Issues of autonomy and augmentation. A look at how Amazon is addressing thisin MIT Tech…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Building Conversations that Create Innovative Ideas
Agree, an ongoing conversation that is closely connected to external information regarding needs and trends.In FastCompany" ... The Best Way to Inspire Innovation Thinking isn't to force a brainstorming session, it's to create…
From Schneier on Security
More about the NSA's XKEYSCORE
I've been reading through the 48 classified documents about the NSA's XKEYSCORE system released by the Intercept last week. From the article: The NSA's XKEYSCORE program, first revealed by The Guardian, sweeps up countless people's…
From insideHPC
Making HPC Simple for Small Companies
In the third report from the PRACEdays15 meeting in Dublin, Tom Wilkie from Scientific Computing World discusses how supercomputing can be made simpler for smaller companies.
The post Making HPC Simple for Small Companies appeared…From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Magazine Addresses Human Curiosity in AI
Analytics Magazine, Jul-Aug 2015Building Human Curiosity into A.I.by Scott ZoldiSelf-learning models: How neuro-dynamic programming enables smart machines to think ahead.Predicting Patient Experience by Sagar Anisingaraju and…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Team Is Hacked
Someone hacked the cyberweapons arms manufacturer Hacking Team and posted 400 GB of internal company data. Hacking Team is a pretty sleazy company, selling surveillance software to all sorts of authoritarian governments around…
From insideHPC
Video: How Seagate Collaborates with LANL on HPC
In this video, Kyle Lamb from the Infrastructure Team at Los Alamos National Lab describes the unique challenges he faces at a facility known for being at the forefront of technology. Kyle addresses the future of storage for …
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of July 6
Tuesday, July 7, 2015 Briefing: Informal STEM Education 101: A Briefing for Policymakers on the Basics of “What We Mean when We Talk about Informal STEM Education” STEM Education Coalition 2 PM | 2325 Rayburn House Office Building…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
NIST Seeks Public Comments on Improving Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection
NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is accepting public comments on a workshop report on improving cybersecurity and consumer protection. The workshop coincided with the White House Summit on Cybersecurity…
From insideHPC
Top HPC Centers Meet in Barcelona at JLESC
Top researchers from six of the largest supercomputing centers got together in Barcelona at the beginning of this month for the Joint Laboratory for Extreme‐Scale Computing (JLESC) to discuss the challenges for future supercomputers…
From BLOG@CACM
The Robots Are Taking Over! (Perhaps Not Quite Yet)
Programs fix themselves! Today! It's scary!
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
EAC Call for Nominations for Technical Guidelines Development Committee
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are accepting applications for four vacancies on the EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee. Candidates should…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
DHS Invites Public Comments on Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is accepting public comments on the establishment of new public-private organizations for cybersecurity information sharing. Comments are due July 10. The new Information Sharing and Analysis…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Energy and Data
Free report from O'Reilly. Based on my own touches with the energy industry, this looks to be very good. Have followed Big energy use of tech for many years, usually impressed, but as with all large enterprises, sometimes”…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ad Age Outlines Virtual Reality
A look at what some of the players in marketing and advertising are doing. The general idea has been around for many years, tested many alternatives. With always the concern that it does not work consistently. Have we stepped…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
2015 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit
The 2015 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit will be streamed live from Redmond, Washington on Wednesday, July 8 and Thursday, July 9. This free online event offers keynotes and selected presentations from the Faculty Summit on…