Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2016
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Robot Arms Race
Good overview .... What characteristics of robotic capability are most involved?How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms RaceIn 2012 Jeff Bezos scooped up warehouse automation firm Kiva. Everyone else is still trying to catch up.Kim…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Source Game Sand Boxes for AI
Always liked the idea of setting up 'sandbox' environments where new technologies could be tested under varying contexts. Good to see this being done here in AI with open source. Will like to see some examples. Why not invite…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Process Modeling and the Future of Work
A starting approach to build a data science, or a cognitive model, is to work from a business process model. Ultimately any improvement changes a way of doing things. Making it faster, better, cheaper. Even a very simple…
From insideHPC
China Team Sets New World Record
A new World Record was set by the Huazhong University team at the Student Cluster Competition at ISC 2016. Using Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs, the team recorded 12.56 teraflops on the LINPACK benchmark, while staying within a 3-Kw power…
From insideHPC
WHPC Panel Looks at Diversity in the Workplace
In this video from the Women in HPC Workshop at ISC 2016, Kim McMahon moderates a panel discussion on Diversity in the Workplace. The panel will discuss methods that to improve workplace diversity, the challenges, successes and…
From Schneier on Security
Dallas Police Use a Robot to Kill a Person
This seems to be a first....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hybrid AI
The broad term was unfamiliar to me, but turns out I have been a proponent of it for some time. The most successful applications we did, that ran successfully for decades, were applications of this type.Manuel Ebert explores…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Imagination Institute
Brought to my attention, The Imagination Institute.Grants CompetitionThe Imagination Institute hosted a grants competition titled Advancing the Science of Imagination: Toward an “Imagination Quotient” to test, validate and develop…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: How Squids See Color Despite Black-and-White Vision
It's chromatic aberration. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From insideHPC
DDN Opens New Techology Center in Paris
DDN has opened a research and development center in Paris, in response to strong demand the French market and across Europe for high-performance big data storage solutions. DDN’s Newly Created Research and Development Centre,…
From Schneier on Security
I'm on an "Adam Ruins Everything" Podcast
Adam Conover interviewed me on his podcast. If you remember, I was featured on his "Adam Ruins Everything" TV episode on security....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Starting an IOT Project
Nicely done piece by William Vorhies, which points to previous leassons as well"IoT 101 – Lesson 3: Everything You Need to Know to Start Your IoT ProjectPosted by William Vorhies on July 5, 2016 Summary: In this Lesson 3 we…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Beacons Now Support NFC
Estimote Supports NFC. Recall some question about the use of beacons with NFC in a past project. This advance addresses another RFID related approach. " .... Google announced last month that its Play Store will start notifying…
From insideHPC
OpenHPC Moves Forward with New Software Release
In this video from ISC 2016, Karl Schultz from the OpenHPC Community provides and update on software releases and other milestones. "OpenHPC is a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project whose mission is to provide an integrated…
From insideHPC
Linvision in the Netherlands Joins Bright Partner Community
Today Bright Computing announced that Linvision has become the latest company to join the Bright Computing partner network, to serve customers across Benelux, France and Germany. "At Linvision, we see a high demand from organizations…
From insideHPC
ESnet Timeline Celebrates 30 Years of Servicing Science
The Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) has published a 3D timeline celebrating thirty years of service. With the launch of an interactive timeline, viewers can explore ESnet’s history and contributions.
The…From insideHPC
Nvidia Showcases DGX-1 Deep Learning Supercomputer at ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016, Marc Hamilton from Nvidia describes the new DGX-1 Deep Learning Supercomputer. "The NVIDIA DGX-1 is the world's first purpose-built system for deep learning with fully integrated hardware and software…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Editions of Watson Analytics
Recent Update. To what degree can this breakdown of analytics be useful, and how can it create an automation of data analytics.A short video on the number of industry editions of Watson Analytics that exist to date. Completely…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Having a Good Day at Work
Can appreciate the thought now that I spend less time at a physical office. Podcast, with some useful strategies. " ... How to Have a Good Day:Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life, author…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Controlling Smartphones With Your Eyes
In CACM:" ... In an effort to make eye tracking cheap, compact, and accurate enough to be included in smartphones, a group of researchers is crowdsourcing the collection of gaze information and using it to teach mobile software…
From Schneier on Security
Researchers Discover Tor Nodes Designed to Spy on Hidden Services
Two researchers have discovered over 100 Tor nodes that are spying on hidden services. Cory Doctorow explains: These nodes -- ordinary nodes, not exit nodes -- sorted through all the traffic that passed through them, looking…
From Writing
From Italy to Ireland
Last year was a bit crazy. I published a book; I started a company; Molly and I sold everything we owned and did a cross-country road trip, with stops at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Devil’s Tower, the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Semantic Data Lakes
Via Tim Smith. Hadoop, Triple Stores, and the Semantic Data Lake, by Alex WoodieHadoop-based data lakes are springing up all over the place as organizations seek low-cost repositories for storing huge mounds of semi-structured…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Secretary of Education Hosts Tea with Computer Science Teachers
Once a month a small group of teachers is invited to have tea with US Secretary of Education John King. June was the month for computer science teachers and I was honored to be one of 14 teachers from around the country to be…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Latency in Voice Command Response
The inside story of how Amazon created Echo, the next billion-dollar business no one saw coming ... by Eugene Kim, Dave Limp Creating the Echo.Reaction: The Challenge of latency in answering questions. how important is it…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Crime
In Forbes: An update on the use of predictive analytics for crime prediction and prevention. With a number of suppliers in the space described. Looks to be mostly about the capture of crime related statistics, the precise…
From Schneier on Security
Hijacking Someone's Facebook Account with a Fake Passport Copy
BBC has the story. The confusion is that a scan of a passport is much easier to forge than an actual passport. This is a truly hard problem: how do you give people the ability to get back into their accounts after they've lost…
From insideHPC
CloudLightning Project Looks to Self-Managed HPC Services
In this video, Prof. John Morrison from University College Cork describes the CloudLightning project. CloudLightning’s vision is a European economy that thrives and leads the world in the provision and adoption of high performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Prevention of Systemic Risk
Here about financial risks. And in fact what are systemic risks? Here appears to be defined by risks that are driven by external context and that are not considered in the design of the system. Major changes in the economy…
From insideHPC
PBS Pro from Altair Goes Open Source at ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016, Bill Nitzberg provides an update on Alair's release of source code for PBS Professional Workload Manager. "Altair is making a big investment toward uniting the whole HPC community to accelerate the…