Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2018
From Schneier on Security
On Financial Fraud
There are some good lessons in this article on financial fraud: That's how we got it so wrong. We were looking for incidental breaches of technical regulations, not systematic crime. And the thing is, that's normal. The nature…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Campbell's and Alexa Voice
Had looked at Campbell's skill early on. As an avid cook, the use of recipes as elements of communication have always fascinated me. They have a preestablished architecture and can provide capsules of communication in powerful…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Health Care Companies are Exploring Blockchain
Short look at possible applications, starting with assured identity and security.
US health care companies begin exploring blockchain technologies
Finding ways to link health care data in a secure and confidential way. PopTika…
From insideHPC
XSEDE allocates $7.3M worth of computing time to U.S. Researchers
"XSEDE has awarded 145 deserving research teams at 109 universities and other institutions access to nearly two dozen NSF-funded computational and storage resources, as well as other services unique to XSEDE, such as the Extended…
From insideHPC
Bringing Big Compute to FEA
In this special guest feature, Gemma Church from Scientific Computing World discusses advances to FEA software as it is now used to simulate a wide range of physical phenomena. "With 40 years” experience in developing FEA technologies…
From insideHPC
Easy and Efficient Multilevel Checkpointing for Extreme Scale Systems
Leonardo Bautista from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center gave this talk at PASC18. "Extreme scale supercomputers offer thousands of computing nodes to their users to satisfy their computing needs. As the need for massively
…
From insideHPC
Finalists Vie for Coveted 2018 Altair Enlighten Award
Today Altair announced the finalists for the 2018 Altair Enlighten Award, which recognizes technology-focused organizations throughout the automotive industry driving innovation in vehicle lightweighting. “Every year brings more…
From insideHPC
Streamline Your HPC Setup with Intel Cluster Checker
"Understanding a cluster can be complex if tools are not available such as Intel Cluster Checker. Think of how many times users complain that their applications are not runing with the expected performance and how long it takes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Collaborating Effectively
An HBR Video:
The Explainer: How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote
Clarity and consistency are key. For more, read How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote ... "
From The Eponymous Pickle
Echo Mod for Sign Language
When I saw this, would appear that this is a hard thing to do, and apparently the range of signs and capabilities are still limited, but a remarkable possibility. For Echo devices that include cameras, the system detects and…
From Schneier on Security
Nicholas Weaver on Cryptocurrencies
This is well-worth reading (non-paywalled version). Here's the opening: Cryptocurrencies, although a seemingly interesting idea, are simply not fit for purpose. They do not work as currencies, they are grossly inefficient, and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Original Content Generation for Assistants, Collaboration
Can content write itself in a useful way? Note this neural method is research, technical and apparently incomplete. Yet still points to some useful directions. Ultimately this could lead to a method that would answer questions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Making Quantum Computing Dev Easier
Have to respect Google for helping the entire industry to advance emerging technologies. I took a brief look at this space and was struck by how hard it was to even basically understand and test the concepts. This could help…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Combining Bayesian Network and Machine Learning
Interesting because of the analytics design, but the domain is something I looked at in a previous area of work. Probably useful when thinking more broadly about maintenance methodology. Note how the ML and Bayesian are connected…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Are vectorized random number generators actually useful?
Our processors benefit from “SIMD” instructions. These instructions can operate on several values at once, thus greatly accelerating some algorithms. Earlier, I reported that you can multiply the speed of common (fast) random…
From insideHPC
Atomicus Chart Software Brings Easy Analytics to Scientists
ISV vendor Atomicus is approaching the release of an advanced software component AtomicusChart developed for scientists researching physical, chemical, biological phenomena and for those who need a convenient tool to present
…
From insideHPC
How Dell EMC is Moving Forward as Thought Leader in AI
"Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI are validated, hardware and software stacks optimized to accelerate AI initiatives, shortening deployment time from weeks to days. They increase data scientist productivity by offering self‐service…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innovation Tracking
Monthly lists of survey based innovation scoring and reporting. Full reports require membership/payment.
PSFK Retail Innovation Tracker
Through a brand survey, PSFK offers its members insights into the world of innovation. Our…
From The Noisy Channel
Shopping is Hard, Let’s go Searching!
In 1992, Mattel released the infamous Teen Talk Barbie, most known — and rightfully mocked — for saying “Math is hard, let’s go shopping!” Actually, that’s a paraphrase, but you get the idea. Fortunately, Mattel has evolved a…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Looks a China’s Three-Pronged Plan for Exascale
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team goes through a fascinating presentation that provides details on China’s Three-Pronged Plan for Exascale. "China may not be the first to Exascale, but they are building three divergent…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Defining AI to Tune Expectations
Correct, the expectations are still much too high for the term AI, and too confused for related Analytics. Narrow applications are here (again) but now can more different things. AGI is much further away, with ranges of estimates…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data, Analytics and Product Management
Obvious need, and application. Doing it well is the challenge.
Apply Data and Analytics Skills to Make the Best Product Management Decisions by Deacon D.K. Wan in Gartner
Most enterprise applications were not designed to capture…
From insideHPC
Growing HPC Adoption Among Manufacturers
The global manufacturing industry is moving down the path to a fourth industrial revolution — Industry 4.0 — empowered by the opportunity to collect and analyze massive amounts of data. This guest post from Intel explores how…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Machine Learning Can and Cannot Do
Very thoughtful piece and blog by a former correspondent. Not very technical.
A blog by Irving Wladawsky-Berger
A collection of observations, news and resources on the changing nature of innovation, technology, leadership, and
What…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Healthcare Personalization
Makes sense, have seen it myself, it also suffers from over regulation, which can look like unpersonal as well. Cleary a potential for disruption.
How Personalization Improves the Healthcare Experience By John Nash
With the
It…
From My Biased Coin
Symposium on Simplicity in Algorithms, Submission Server
A reminder that the deadline for SOSA 2019 is August 16. The submission server is live and running (and we already have some submissions!). The easychair link is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sosa2019 , and general…
From Schneier on Security
1Password's Travel Mode
The 1Password password manager has just introduced "travel mode," which allows you to delete your stored passwords when you're in other countries or crossing borders: Your vaults aren't just hidden; they're completely removed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alibaba Cloud ET Medical Brain
Chinese Advances in Healthcare AI
How Alibaba Cloud ET Medical Brain Is Transforming Healthcare with Artificial Intelligence
Developments in medical sciences have improved average human life expectancy over the years. Technological…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Toolkit for Deep Learning Vision
Was pointed to this. for potential use for an application:
GluonCV — Deep Learning Toolkit for Computer Vision
Author: Mu Li, Principal Scientist at Amazon Translated from: https://zh.mxnet.io/blog/gluon-cv
Apache MXNetMay 16 ..…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Modeling a Simple Organism
http://openworm.org/
OpenWorm is an open source project dedicated to creating the first virtual organism in a computer.
Why?
Because modeling a simple nervous system is a first step toward fully understanding complex systems like…