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 insideHPC
Massive-Scale Analytics Applied to Real-World Problems
David Bader from Georgia Tech gave this talk at PASC18. "Emerging real-world graph problems include: detecting and preventing disease in human populations; revealing community structure in large social networks; and improving…
From insideHPC
Intel and Micron to Disband 3D XPoint Memory Partnership
Micron and Intel have announced that their partnership to develop 3D XPoint memory will be disbanded over the next 12 months. "The partnership will be disbanded once the second generation of the technology has been completed
…
From insideHPC
Porting HPC Codes with Directives and OpenACC
In this video from ISC 2018, Michael Wolfe from OpenACC.org describes how scientists can port their code to accelerated computing. "OpenACC is a user-driven directive-based performance-portable parallel programming model designed…
From insideHPC
Why the World is Starting to look like a Giant HPC Cluster
"AI, machine learning, is not a (traditional) HPC workload. However, it takes an HPC machine to do it. If you look at HPC, generally, you take a model or things like that, you turn it into an extraordinarily large amount of data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Small Robotics for DARPA
Continue to watch the robotics of the very small. These were predicted long ago, and now emerging.
DARPA's insect-sized SHRIMP robots could aid disaster relief
Meet the tiny, versatile robots built to navigate high-risk environments…
From Schneier on Security
Suing South Carolina Because Its Election Machines Are Insecure
A group called Protect Democracy is suing South Carolina because its insecure voting machines are effectively denying people the right to vote. Note: I am an advisor to Protect Democracy on its work related to election cybersecurity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SIGAI: ACM Updates its Code of Ethics
ACM has updated its code of ethics, and published this on their newsletter/blog. Of considerable length, breadth and depth. Below a short heading excerpt, continued at the link.
AI Matters
AI Matters: A Newsletter of ACM SIGAI…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Group Theory Is Tough
Some musings on group theory Isaacs honorary conference source Martin Issacs is a group theorist emeritus from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I just picked up a copy of his 2008 book, Finite Group Theory. Simple title;…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Managing Teams of Robots with Brainwaves and Hand Gestures
Is this the way we will control and work with teams of robots? In the MIT News.
How to control robots with brainwaves and hand gestures
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory system enables people to correct…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Releases all US Building Footprints
Reported in Flowingdata, fascinating dataset. Architectural and building industry studies? An Exmple of open data
Details in Microsoft Github.
" ... This dataset contains 124,885,597 computer generated building footprints in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Doorstep Photography
Another example of transparency in the supply chain.
Are photos of packages on doorsteps helpful? by Tom Ryan in Retailwire
Amazon’s drivers are increasingly taking pictures of where they put the packages they deliver and even…
From insideHPC
InfiniBand Powers World’s Fastest Supercomputer
Today the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) announced that the latest TOP500 List results that report the world’s new fastest supercomputer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit system, is accelerated by InfiniBand EDR. InfiniBand…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Accelerating Conway’s Game of Life with SIMD instructions
Conway’s Game of Life is one of the simplest non-trivial simulation one can program. It simulates the emergence of life from chaos. Though the rules are simple, the game of life is still being studied for the last five decades…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Detecting Bots
Not very useful, but an interesting look at how Twitter bots might be detected. This implies you will very carefully consider every tweet and its context. Most people do not do that. So not sure this works for casual scanning…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grocers Partner for Digital Growth
Some interesting data on the value of digital in grocery. In particular big investments in leading edge technologies. Also the relatively rare use of the term ROI as welll.
Grocers Partner For Digital Growth
Ananda Chakravarty…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Updated ACM Code of Ethics Released
From insideHPC
Report: Exascale Software Development Project on Track
Software development for future DOE Exascale machines is on track, according to a new Report. While the first Exascale machine is not slated for delivery to Argonne until 2021, ongoing efforts continue towards the monumental
…
From insideHPC
Xilinx Acquires DeePhi Tech, a Machine Learning Startup based in China
Today FPGA maker Xilinx announced that it has acquired DeePhi Technology, a Beijing-based privately held start-up with industry-leading capabilities in machine learning, specializing in deep compression, pruning, and system-level…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Causality and Data Science
Of interest, reviewing.
Causal Data Science By Adam Kelleher
Physicist; Data @ BuzzFeed; Adjunct Prof. at Columbia
I started a series of posts aimed at helping people learn about causality in data science (and science in general)…
From insideHPC
Penguin Computing to Deploy Supercomputer at ICHEC in Ireland
Today Penguin Computing (a subsidiary of SMART Global Holdings) announced that it will deliver the new national supercomputer to the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) at the National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway…
From insideHPC
NEC Accelerates HPC with Vector Computing at ISC 2018
In this video from ISC 2018, Oliver Tennert from NEC Deutschland GmbH introduces the company's vector computing technologies for HPC and Machine Learning. "The NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA is the newest in the line of NEC SX Vector
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Announcing Chatbox for Talking to the Customer
Pointed out to me. Closer to a real continued, intelligent conversation with the customer. What we hoped to gain in past approaches.
Chatbox launches messaging ecosystem for personalized customer experiences at scale
Chatbox Instant…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How to Come up with Great Ideas
Broadly useful thoughts. Still think there is use for a 'startup' inside a company.
How to Come Up with Great Ideas
Think like an entrepreneur. By Kate Matsudaira in Queue
"I would love to do a startup, but I don't have any ideas…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Conversation with J Doyne Farmer
I recall following the work of J Doyne Farmer when we were interested in economic models that included arguments about complexity, at the Santa Fe Institute. Here is a conversation with him that is a good update on what he is…
From Schneier on Security
Defeating the iPhone Restricted Mode
Recently, Apple introduced restricted mode to protect iPhones from attacks by companies like Cellebrite and Greyshift, which allow attackers to recover information from a phone without the password or fingerprint. Elcomsoft just…
From Wild WebMink
Should we celebrate the anniversary of open source?
Today in Portland at OSCON, OSI will be celebrating 20 years of open source. I’ve had a few comments along the lines of “I’ve was saying ‘open source’ before 1998 so why bother with this 20 year celebration?”
That’s entirely…From Putting People First
Why bad technology dominates our lives, according to Don Norman
We have unwittingly accepted the paradigm that technology comes first, with people relegated to doing the actions that the machines cannot do, writes Don Norman. This requires people to act like machines, ever ready to take over…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Oracle Rolls out a Blockchain Service
Everybody is looking to get involved with Blockchains. With mention of Smart Contracts.
Oracle rolls out its own blockchain service
Oracle joins IBM, SAP, and Microsoft in offering blockchain-as-a-service for companies hoping…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sensors for Earthquakes
We did a short test in this area:
Tiny Sensors May Help Avert Earthquake Damage, Track Sonar Danger, 'Listen' to Pipelines
Simon Fraser University
Marianne Meadahl
Engineers at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Canada have developed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Need for More than Autonomy
Fascinating piece on installing better integration of business process and discovery into devices and systems we build. Then driving the autonomy with interim findings. It like building creativity into that process with being…