Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2019
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Khari Douglas is now Senior Program Associate for Engagement!
Khari Douglas, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Program Associate, was recently promoted to Senior Program Associate! Khari has worked on a number of projects while at CCC, including organizing and running visioning workshops…
From insideHPC
Rigetti Computing Named Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum
Today Rigetti Computing announced that the company has been named as one of the World Economic Forum’s “Technology Pioneers”. Rigetti Computing was founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti, and has made its quantum computers available…
From insideHPC
SC19 Announces Lineup of Invited Speakers
"Complementing the SC19 conference theme, “HPC is Now!”, the SC19 Invited Talks program brings together 12 leading researchers whose talks will highlight the translational impact of HPC in all areas of science and society. These…
From insideHPC
Accelerating Time to Results for AI at Samsung UK
Crispin Keable from Atos gave this talk at the DDN User Group in Frankfurt. "To provide a user-centric ecosystem, Samsung aims to build an AI platform under a common architecture that will not only scale quickly but also provide…
From insideHPC
D-Wave Announces Largest-Ever Quantum Cloud-Access Contract
Today D-Wave Systems announced largest-ever global quantum cloud contract with Sigma-i, a company in Japan formed to optimize the world with quantum computing technologies. Sigma-i will offer quantum consulting services and access…
From Schneier on Security
Google Releases Basic Homomorphic Encryption Tool
Google has released an open-source cryptographic tool: Private Join and Compute. From a Wired article: Private Join and Compute uses a 1970s methodology known as "commutative encryption" to allow data in the data sets to be encrypted…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Free Update of Online Encyclopedia of Statistical Science
An excellent and considerable online free resource for data science, analytics and statistics. Covering over 600 methods and concepts. Many visualizations of concepts.
You will be asked to join Data Science Central (DSC) which…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Insect Robotics
For some time Harvard has been the nexus for small robotics. For small, swarming or sensor tasks.
Unleashed, Robo-Insect Takes Flight
The New York Times
Knvul Sheikh
June 26, 2019
Researchers at Harvard University have developed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Assistants Need Connections
A fundamental idea, the ability to use skills to build up other skills. Reminds me of object oriented programming. Will this work usefully at the right level of abstraction?
Amazon makes skill connections for Alexa apps generally…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simulating the Ledger in Context
Simulation has always been a favorite tool. Create a space that includes the context and metadata of an environment for some need. Then build a means to explore it. The exploration can be exploration combinatorially. Or…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Still Creating Jobs
Some good details here:
Is AI killing jobs? Actually, it added 3x more than it replaced in 2018
By Lydia Dishman in FastCompany
An oft-cited McKinsey report that predicted 30% of all workers may be displaced by technology and another…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobile Productivity Sensing
Inevitable perhaps, but is it Big Brother or will it be interpreted that way?
Can mobile sensing tools boost worker productivity? in Retailwire by Tom Ryan with discussion
Using smartphones, fitness bracelets and a custom app…
From insideHPC
Summit Supercomputer Triples Performance Record on new HPL-AI Benchmark
"Using HPL-AI, a new approach to benchmarking AI supercomputers, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit system has achieved unprecedented performance levels of 445 petaflops or nearly half an exaflops. That compares with the
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Cameras for Theft
Again likely to be adopted commonly, if at least for liability. We saw it in European future stores a decade ago.
Walmart uses AI camera tech to track checkout theft at 1,000 stores
It might help cut losses, but it raises privacy…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Asteroid Impacts for Planetary Defenses
In support of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, researchers are creating 3-D models and using one of NASA’s most powerful supercomputers to produce simulations of hypothetical asteroid impact scenarios. "Asteroid
…
From Schneier on Security
Yubico Security Keys with a Crypto Flaw
Wow, is this an embarrassing bug: Yubico is recalling a line of security keys used by the U.S. government due to a firmware flaw. The company issued a security advisory today that warned of an issue in YubiKey FIPS Series devices…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Welcome CCC Welcomes New Council Members!
Today, July 1st, is the start of a new term at CCC! The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair Mark Hill and Vice Chair Liz Bradley are staying in their respective roles for another year. They look forward to continuing the…
From insideHPC
NEC SX-Aurora Vector Supercomputer to Power Weather Forecasting at DWD in Germany
In this video from ISC 2019, Dr. Rodolf Fischer from NEC describes how the company's recent win at DWD demonstrates the power and efficiency of the SX-Aurora supercomputer. "The new HPC system will enable the development of seamless…
From insideHPC
Video: DDN Launches EXA 5 at ISC 2019
In this video from ISC 2019, James Coomer from DDN describes the company's new EXA 5 advanced Lustre solution. "We’ve built EXA5 directly for the new era of HPC and AI in the context of Multicloud. We are introducing an entirely…