Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2017
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visions of the Future of Work
Reviewing:
The Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology
We’re imagining scenarios for the future of work
Findings of Shift: The Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology
What do a hundred American leaders find when they compare…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Untangling Decision Making
Untangling your organization’s decision making
Any organization can improve the speed and quality of its decisions by paying more attention to what it’s deciding. By Aaron De Smet, Gerald Lackey, and Leigh M. Weiss by McKinsey…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tracking Ad Effects Offline
Snap Seeking offline ad success measures: In Adage:
" ... Snap Inc. has acquired Placed, a startup that measures the offline success of digital advertising campaigns, for about $125 million, according to people familiar with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Charting Change
Last year taught a course at Columbia on change management. To my students who are still following, here is a nice piece out of Innovation Excellence on charting change. Some very useful points included.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Why It's Hard to Track the Squid Population
Counting squid is not easy. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here....
From Schneier on Security
An Assassin's Teapot
This teapot has two chambers. Liquid is released from one or the other depending on whether an air hole is covered. I want one....
From insideHPC
Video: Increasing Efficiency of Sparse Matrix-Matrix Multiplication
"Given the importance of the precise sparsity pattern, and even the actual matrix data, which decides the effective fill-in upon multiplication, the tests are performed within the CP2K package with application benchmarks. Results…
From Wild WebMink
Permissive and Copyleft Are Not Antonyms
Using the term “permissive” as an antonym to “copyleft” – or “restrictive” as its synonym – are unhelpful framing. Describe license reciprocity instead.
Some open source licenses implement a clever hack invented by Richard…From insideHPC
Automotive Simulation Center Stuttgart teams with Rescale
Today Rescale announced that it has become a full member of the Automotive Simulation Center Stuttgart, or asc(s. The asc(s is a non-profit organization promoting high-performance simulation in virtual vehicle development. It…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing DNA Packing in Nuclei at TACC
Aaron Dubrow writes that researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch are exploring DNA folding and cellular packing with supercomputing power from TACC. "In the field of molecular biology, there's a wonderful interplay…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (July 7th, 2017)
People magazine recently named Julia Roberts, who is 49, as the World’s Most Beautiful Woman. Volvo plans to commercialize self-driving cars in 2020, and all electric by 2019. France will ban petrol cars in 2040. The Fermi paradox…
From insideHPC
Mateo Valero on how the MareNostrum 4 Supercomputer will Advance Science
In this video from ISC 2017, Mateo Valero from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center describes the innovations behind MareNostrum 4, the #13 supercomputer on the TOP500. "MareNostrum 4, hosted by Barcelona Supercomputing Center…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Are your strings immutable?
A value is immutable if it cannot change. Immutability is a distinct notion than that of a constant. The speed of light in a vacuum is believed to be a universal constant, for example. Constants are immutable in the sense that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Revolution in Science
Well done and non-technical explanation of this in Science Mag. Not about the automation of these capabilities, but the techniques that can be used to work with the vast amounts of data being gathered. Most every segment of…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Unveils Spectrum-2 400 Gigabit Open Ethernet Switch
"Spectrum-2 Open Ethernet switch enables our customers and partners to meet the voracious demands of data speed, data processing and real time data analytics, and to gain competitive advantages,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Driverless AI
The term was new to me, but not the concept. Makes sense, if it is really AI then it should manage itself. Easier/cheaper than having room fulls of scientists building systems. But here also aspects like testing, maintaining…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apples Talking in the IOT
Uday Prabhu, General Manager, Internet of Things
Robert Bosch Engineering & Business Solutions Pvt Ltd writes:
Talking Apples! The Conversation with Things in Linkedin.
Here he talks an internet of vegetable things in the grocery…
From Schneier on Security
DNI Wants Research into Secure Multiparty Computation
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is soliciting proposals for research projects in secure multiparty computation: Specifically of interest is computing on data belonging to different -- potentially…
From My Biased Coin
Mitzenmacher and Upfal, 2nd Edition
The word is that the 2nd edition of our book is now (finally) available/in stock at Amazon. You can tell it's the 2nd edition, because the "Alice cover" is now in blue -- I think it's a good look. But even more than that, there's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intelligent Video Analytics
Recently asked to look at this… for applications beyond security:
What it can do for your business
IBM Intelligent Video Analytics helps security and public safety organizations develop comprehensive security, intelligence and…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Computer Science Teacher or Teacher of Computer Science
In some respects we have an identity problem in computer science education. Some of us think of ourselves as computer science teachers. Generally that means we identify as teaching computer science first. Maybe that is all we…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intel Chief Talks Augmented vs Artificial
Always interesting to hear opinions on rapidly emerging technologies from the big players. Ultimately they must make the investments that need to be made.
Artificial or Augmented Intelligence: Talks with Intel’s Chief Data Scientist…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Chasing Focus
Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus By Srini Pillay
The ability to focus is an important driver of excellence. Focused techniques such as to-do lists, timetables, and calendar reminders all help people to stay on task.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Disney and Kid-Robot Interactions
Interesting thought. Applications to robot-people interactions? Storytelling mentioned. Robots as androids, or more generally as devices? Do COPPA, and other regulations, apply the same way with robots? What does natural…
From insideHPC
How HPE is Approaching Exascale with Memory-Driven Computing
In this video from ISC 2017, Mike Vildibill describes how Hewlett Packard Enterprise describes why we need Exascale and how the company is pushing forward with Memory-Driven Computing. "At the heart of HPE’s exascale reference…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks at Results from the ISC 2017 Student Cluster Competition
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks back at the recent ISC 2017 conference and summarizes results from the Student Cluster Competition. "Eleven student teams were on the show floor this year, vying against each other…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Blue Sky Ideas Track at Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence in February 2018
The Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 2-7, 2018. The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster…
From insideHPC
Red Hat Debuts Multi-Architecture Solutions for HPC at ISC 2017
In this video, Yan Fisher from Red Hat describes the company's multi-architecture solutions that were on display at ISC 2017. "Historically, HPC workloads have had to rely on custom-built software stacks, most of which relied…
From insideHPC
PSSC Labs Powers University of Dayton Atmospheric Optics Research
PSSC Labs recently announced the deployment of a powerful, turn-key HPC Cluster for the University of Dayton’s Intelligent Optics Laboratory. "It was important for us to select a vendor familiar with the systems requirements
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How we Draw
Fascinating piece on how different cultures draw, using the circle as an example. A piece of metadata to understand and classify people and cultures? Note Google's recent drawing system experiment: AutoDraw, linked to below…