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 Computing Community Consortium Blog
Three NSF Webinars on Thursday
There are three National Science Foundation (NSF) webinars this Thursday, July 28th about three different solicitations. Read about them below and register to join one! PAWR Webinar The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Sells UK Product Innovation Center
Does innovation need location anymore? It has been debated. Known as the Egham Center. In Bizjournals:" ... Procter & Gamble has agreed to sell a major product innovation center near London that employs more than 600 people…
From insideHPC
Video: Building HPC Clusters as Code in the (Almost) Infinite Cloud
Jeff Layton from Amazon presented this talk at the AWS Public Sector Summit. "Learn how to build HPC clusters on the fly, leverage Amazon’s Spot market pricing to minimize the cost of HPC jobs, and scale HPC jobs on a small budget…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Need for Dynamic Machine Learning
In one sense all typical, static machine learning methods are wrong. That is they are based on past data, and the context that drove that data has changed. The question is, are the resulting models 'too wrong' to get useful…
From insideHPC
MIPT in Moscow Develops New Method of Calculating Protein Interaction
Biologists and mathematicians from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have accelerated the rate at which a computer can predict the structure of protein complexes in a cell. "The new method enables us to model…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Receives Baidu Award for Innovation in Machine Learning
Today Mellanox announced it has received the Award for Technology Innovation from Baidu, Inc. The award recognizes Mellanox's achievements in designing and delivering a high-performance, low latency interconnect technology solution…
From The Eponymous Pickle
History of Measuring Time
In Gizmag, a remarkable illustrated look at the history of the stopwatch, A very favorite topic, the history and process of measurement. One of my earliest jobs was to wander a factory with a stopwatch to look for opportunities…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Common sense in artificial intelligence… by 2026?
Lots of people want to judge machine intelligence based on human intelligence. It dates back to Turing who proposed his eponymous Turing test: can machines “pass” as human beings? Turing, being clever, was aware of how biased…
From insideHPC
Inria Joins OpenMP ARB
"Inria teams have been developing runtime systems and compiler techniques for parallel programming over several decades.” says Olivier Aumage, researcher at Inria's team STORM, “By joining the OpenMP ARB today, Inria looks forward…
From insideHPC
Superior Performance Commits Kyoto University to CPUs Over GPUs
In this special guest feature, Rob Farber writes that a study done by Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine shows that code modernization can help Intel Xeon processors outperform GPUs on machine learning code. "The Kyoto…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cyber Social Learning Systems
Cyber-Social Learning Systems Via Jim SpohrerCyber-social learning systems (CSLS) deeply integrate digital computing with human and social phenomena to drive rapid learning by, and improvements in, the functioning and performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Solutions to VR Motion Sickness
Surprisingly, though I have some tendency to have motion sickness, have never seen it in VR demonstrations, though have usually been short. Some solutions. via Columbia University Research.
From Schneier on Security
The Economist on Hacking the Financial System
The Economist has an article on the potential hacking of the global financial system, both for profit or to cause mayhem. It's reasonably balanced. So how might such an attack unfold? Step one, several months before mayhem is…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 25 July 2016
Blogging just hasn’t been my thing the last two weeks. Too much travel, too much work around the house when I haven’t been traveling, and I really need to do more prep for the new course I am teaching in September. Speaking of…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The Mathematics Of Dan’s Inferno
A possible error with mathematical ramifications Non-technical fact-check source Dan Brown is the bestselling author of the novel The Da Vinci Code. His most recent bestseller, published in 2013, is Inferno. Like two of his earlier…
From Computational Complexity
The College Issues that are talked about/College issues that are important
The following college issues get lots of attention: Admissions- high school students PLAN to do things JUST to get them into an elite college. For example nobody takes the SATs just for the fun of it anymore. Admissions- Some…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Magic Leap and China Augmented Reality Shopping
Video at the link. Suggesting further advances in China retail technology.In Mashable: Magic Leap demo in China shows augmented reality shoppingThe incredibly secretive augmented reality startup Magic Leap showed off another…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autonomous Selection of Mars Laser Targets
An example of autonomy for a complex system. Here the Curiosity Rover on Mars. At one level this is similar to closed loop process control, but with more complex sensor analysis being done in that loop. Assume this increases…
From The Noisy Channel
Reduce Scope
When I left the cocoon of academia nearly two decades ago to become a software engineer, I quickly learned two lessons.
From insideHPC
SIMULAB Project to Advance Aerospace Simulation
MSC Software has announced a partnership with the Campania Region Technological Aerospace District to launch the SIMULAB Project (Simulation Laboratory for the Development of Aeronautical Programs). MSC will join efforts with…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Better Engines at Argonne
Researchers are using Argonne supercomputers to jump-start internal-combustion engine designs in the name of conservation. “Improving engine efficiencies by even a few percentage points can take a big chunk out of our carbon …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kinds of Choices in Process
I have been a long time student of decision methods, and the concept of a 'Hobson's Choice' (i.e. take it or leave it) came up recently. The formal classification of different kinds of related decisions are described inthis…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Programming with Objects
A technical piece that won't mean much to you unless you have done professional programming in the last decades. I did some of that in the early days of what was called OOP, and remember misgivings when the 'sharable' aspects…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Singularity University
I was reminded of Singularity University" ... What is Singularity University?Our mission is to educate, inspire and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address humanity's grand challenges. .... "Singularity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Following Watson: Watson Facing Cybercrime
Continuing to follow Watson to determine what the ideal application is. Is it mostly about big and volatile knowledge, appropriately indexed? Leveraged with machine learning. To find appropriate cases for reapplication? That's…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Intel Scalable System Framework Moves HPC Forward at the System Level
In this Intel Chip Chat podcast, Alyson Klein and Charlie Wuischpard describe Intel’s investment to break down walls to HPC adoption and move innovation forward by thinking at a system level. "Charlie discusses the announcement…
From insideHPC
Diablo Technologies Memory1 Goes into Production
"Memory1 provides the highest-capacity system memory solution on the market, enabling massive increases in server and application capability. Diablo’s JEDEC-compliant, flash-based DIMMs, interface seamlessly with existing server…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What is Cognitive Analytics?
Good question. Larry Smith gens up a good answer:" .... Cognitive analytics focuses on the analytical thinking you do in your mind, just with a cognitive machine. With cognitive computing technology as its backbone, cognitive…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Disruption Considered
Been asked about the concept recently, not that well defined, but a case where extreme examples are obvious. In the consumers mind, or business? In McKinsey:" ... Incumbents needn’t be victims of disruption if they recognize…
From Putting People First
Emerging social roles for life in 2025
Over the last five years Ericsson’s Networked Society Lab has been exploring what social life in 2025 might mean. How have 20th structures of industrialization been challenged? What is happening with life and lifestyles right…