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 Schneier on Security
Now It's Easier than Ever to Steal Someone's Keys
The website key.me will make a duplicate key from a digital photo. If a friend or coworker leaves their keys unattended for a few seconds, you know what to do....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Effectiveness of Retail Loyalty Programs
Good piece, and especially discussion on use and effectiveness of retail loyalty programs.
How can retailers make loyalty programs more effective? by Tom Ryan
According to the 2017 COLLOQUY Loyalty Census Report, growth in
“The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Consumer Brands and Blockchain
IBM piece. Refers to some work done by Wal-Mart using Blockchain. But then takes it further.
By Laurence Haziot, IBM Global Managing Director and General Manager Consumer Industries
Why Consumer Brands Should Care About Blockchain…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Evolution of Amazon Recommender Systems
Building a store for each consumer. And how those consumers evolve over time? Instructive piece. What is the driving force for change? In IEEE Computer Society:
Two Decades of Recommender Systems at Amazon.com
Brent Smith, Amazon…
From Apophenia
Tech Culture Can Change
We need: Recognition, Repentance, Respect, and Reparation. To be honest, what surprises me most about the current conversation about the inhospitable nature of tech for women is that people are surprised. To say that discrimination…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Welcomes New Council Members and Leadership!
Saturday, July 1st, was the start of a new term at CCC! The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair Elizabeth Mynatt and Vice Chair Mark Hill are continuing in their respective roles for another year. The other members of…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Eric and Mike Turn 60
Birthday workshop at Rutgers last January Combined from source Eric Allender and Michael Saks have been leading lights in computing theory for four decades. They have both turned 60 this year. I greatly enjoyed the commemorative…
From Schneier on Security
Dubai Deploying Autonomous Robotic Police Cars
It's hard to tell how much of this story is real and how much is aspirational, but it really is only a matter of time: About the size of a child's electric toy car, the driverless vehicles will patrol different areas of the city…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Twitter Chat - teaching computer science away from the computer #InfyEdChat
I'm going to host a twitter chat on Monday, July 10, 5PM PT / 8PM ET. Join me to talk about teaching computer science away from the computer. Bring your ideas and pick up more. Follow #InfyEdChat to take part.
I think most of…
![#InfyEdChat (49)[483]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-BPcwKUZf6Ug/WV0c5lChzpI/AAAAAAAACqo/BPhr71-PNOoEP2kSOuptgnyZvwJPUA3UgCHMYCw/%2523InfyEdChat%2B%252849%2529%255B483%255D_thumb%255B1%255D?imgmax=800 "#InfyEdChat (49)[483]")
From The Eponymous Pickle
Filling in Missing Data in Brain Scans
Intriguing work that looks specifically at data from after-stroke brain scans. And an example of how this method can be used more broadly. Having AI based methods fill in plausible data is a natural next step. Not a difficult…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
How We Learn: A Book that Understands the Research and Brings it to the Masses
There's a lot of research out there on the theory of learning, so you'd think we'd all know the tricks by now. Unfortunately, due to the relative inaccessibility of academic research by the general public, this isn't the case…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Assistant Statistics
From Bloomberg, first specific stats I have seen:
" ... Shipments of intelligent home speakers surged nearly 600 percent to 4.2 million units in the fourth quarter, with Amazon taking about an 88 percent share and Google 10 percent…
From insideHPC
European Supercomputing Centers Adopt Joint Procurement Process
Some of Europe’s leading supercomputing centers have joined forces to create a buyers group that will enable joint public procurement of new HPC systems. "The new partnership of four public HPC centers (BSC, CINECA, JSC, and
…
From insideHPC
Atos Launches World’s Fastest Quantum Simulator
"There is real excitement about new technologies like Quantum Computing, however many things are needed to help users learn how to program and use Quantum computers," said Earl Joseph, CEO at Hyperion Research. "By providing
…
From insideHPC
Maxeler Technologies Accelerates Analytics on UK G-Cloud
Today Maxeler Technologies announced it is now on the G-Cloud 9 framework and can offer its world class accelerated compute performance to the entire UK Public Sector. "I am delighted we can support all parts of the UK Public…
From insideHPC
NEC’s Aurora Vector Engine & Advanced Storage Speed HPC & Machine Learning at ISC 2017
In this video from ISC 2017, Oliver Tennert from NEC Deutschland GmbH introduces the company's advanced technologies for HPC and Machine Learning. "Today NEC Corporation announced that it has developed data processing technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alibaba Builds Echo for China
Apparently only in Mandarin for now. Continued competition in this space.
Alibaba Challenges Google, Amazon With New Echo-Like Device
By Lulu Yilun Chen in Bloomberg
Tencent, Baidu also developing their own home assistants
The
The…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA and Baidu Partner Up to Accelerate AI
Today NVIDIA and Baidu today announced a broad partnership to bring the world’s leading artificial intelligence technology to cloud computing, self-driving vehicles and AI home assistants. “We believe AI is the most powerful
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Echo as Intercom
Has now rolled out, have used it daily for a week, obvious useful add for the smart home.
Alexa gets room-to-room intercom support between Echo devices
by Chaim Gartenberg@cgartenberg ..... "
Something we wanted early on. Addresses…
From Computational Complexity
The Complexity of Rubik's Cube
From Schneier on Security
Commentary on US Election Security
Good commentaries from Ed Felten and Matt Blaze. Both make a point that I have also been saying: hacks can undermine the legitimacy of an election, even if there is no actual voter or vote manipulation. Felten: The second lesson…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Overview of Recurrent Neural Networks
An overview of recurrent neural networks, and a tour of different types used for deep learning applications. Note in particular, such problems that require sequencing, like forecasting. Once again, nicely done by Jason Brownlee…
From Schneier on Security
GoldenEye Malware
I don't have anything to say -- mostly because I'm otherwise busy -- about the malware known as GoldenEye, NotPetya, or ExPetr. But I wanted a post to park links. Please add any good revelent links in the comments....
From insideHPC
Liquid Cooling Ecosystem Expands for HPC with CoolIT Systems
In this video, CoolIT Systems debuts high TDP processor coldplates, STULZ Micro Data Center with Rack DCLC™, and new liquid cooled OEM servers at ISC High Performance 2017 in Frankfurt Germany.
The post Liquid Cooling Ecosystem…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing New Tools for Cancer Detection
"In the future, though, it may be possible to diagnose cancer much earlier using more sensitive body scans, new types of biomarker tests, and even nano-sensors working in the bloodstream. Experimenting with these techniques in…
From insideHPC
Intel’s Raj Hazra on how new technologies are Clouding our Future
In this video from ISC 2017, Raj Hazra, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise and Government Group at Intel, discusses key trends impacting the future growth of High Performance Computing. He focuses
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI for Manufacturing Process Control
Interesting process manufacturing example. Weight control is a very often used, and a simple control process. Interesting to see how this differs.
Hershey adopts AI process to perfect Twizzlers production
The Hershey Co. is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
API Economy
Expanding business models
2017 Is Quickly Becoming The Year Of The API Economy
This year more CIOs will have their bonuses tied to how many new business models they help create with existing and planned IT platforms than ever before…
From Writing
Yak Shaving Series #1: All I need is a little bit of disk space
I just published the first entry in The Yak Shaving Series, where we share stories of some of the unexpected, bizarre, painful, and time-consuming problems we’ve had to solve while working on DevOps and infrastructure: Yak…
From Writing
Yak Shaving Series #1: All I need is a little bit of disk space
I just published the first entry in The Yak Shaving Series, where we share stories of some of the unexpected, bizarre, painful, and time-consuming problems we’ve had to solve while working on DevOps and infrastructure: Yak…