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 Daniel Lemire's Blog
How fast can a BufferedReader read lines in Java?
In an earlier post, I asked how fast the getline function in C++ could run through the lines in a text file. The answer was about 2 GB/s. That is slower than some of the best disk drives and network connections. If you take into…
From insideHPC
Virginia Tech researchers lead breakthrough in quantum computing
Large, error-correcting quantum computers envisioned today could be decades away, yet experts are vigorously trying to come up with ways to use existing and near-term quantum processors to solve useful problems despite limitations…
From insideHPC
Atos Powers HPC for Genomic Pilot Platform
Atos was recently selected by GCS AURAGEN to provide and orchestrate the high-performance computing infrastructure and storage of a new genomic pilot platform for high-flow sequencing calculation. "The Atos solution is designed…
From insideHPC
VSC-4 from Lenovo is Austria’s most powerful supercomputer
Lenovo has deployed the fastest supercomputer in Austria. Installed by EDV-Design at TU Wien, the water cooled Vienna Scientific Cluster 4 (VSC-4) ranks #82 in the TOP500 list. "The compute nodes are directly water cooled allowing…
From insideHPC
Accelerating High-Resolution Weather Models with Deep-Learning Hardware
Sam Hatfield from the University of Oxford gave this talk at the PASC19 conference. "In this paper, we investigate the use of mixed-precision hardware that supports floating-point operations at double-, single- and half-precision…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Gives Out 100K Google Minis to the Paralyzed
Google is giving out free devices for the paralyzed. Great effort and also a way to illustrate the particular value of assistants for paralytics and other related accessibility applications. Read the below testimony to its…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Captioning Audible Books
The idea below is a kind of captioning of audio from a a book being read to you. Gives you two streams, audio and visual, for a given book. I would find this useful, sometimes one or the other works better, also seems its…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gut vs Brain
Perhaps a radical view, but things other than out brain do think for us, should we use them as models for intelligence as well?
Questioning the Cranial Paradigm
A Talk By Caroline A. Jones [6.19.19]
Part of the definition of intelligence…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Assistant Rolls Out in Waze
Continued better integration of Google methods within their Assistant.
The Google Assistant is now available in Waze
Austin Chang
Director, Google Assistant
Think about the last time you were stuck in traffic—the minutes you spent…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Odds vs Probability
Good thought, since I am from an engineering background, I hear probability rather than odds.
Are you mixing up odds with probability? in TowardDataScience
Odds and probability are different, and too many people make decisions…
From Schneier on Security
Insider Logic Bombs
Add to the "not very smart criminals" file: According to court documents, Tinley provided software services for Siemens' Monroeville, PA offices for nearly ten years. Among the work he was asked to perform was the creation of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pricing Smart Products
Towards business models of smart products.
5 Questions to Consider When Pricing Smart Products
Nicolaj Siggelkow, Christian Terwiesch in HBR
Imagine you are the CEO of an oral care company and you have been selling a product called…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Introduces third Startup Class
Interesting list of developers follows:
Amazon’s Alexa Accelerator introduces its third startup class By Kyle Wiggers
A year to the day after Amazon revealed the companies selected to participate in the second annual Alexa Accelerator…
From Computational Complexity
The Advisor/Advisee Relationship
I've always felt a strong advisor/advisee relationship is the single most important factor in a successful PhD career. At its best, the advisor works closely with the student to successful research agenda and help mentor them…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Discrepancy Games and Sensitivity
Can we connect the talks that closed this month’s Random Structures and Algorithms conference? Cropped from NYU homepage Joel Spencer gave the closing talk of last week’s Random Structures and Algorithms conference at ETH Zurich…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Prize Primary Tools
Sciences used in the Socialbot Grand Challenge.
AI Tools Let Alexa Prize Participants Focus on Science By Anu Venkatesh
March 4 marks the kickoff of the third Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge, in which university teams build…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hierarchical Clustering Example
Here a good technical, but readily understandable, example of hierarchical clustering. With Code. We used similar methods in the enterprise, but not for crime data clustering. We used routines in SAS.
US Arrests: Hierarchical…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
RFI Released to Improve Federal Data and Models for Artificial Intelligence R&D
Recently, the White House posted a Request for Information (RFI) inviting suggestions for improvements to Federal data and models needed to accelerate AI R&D and testing. See below for more details. Your responses, and/or those…
From insideHPC
DOE Funds $37 Million for Materials and Chemistry Research in Quantum Information Science
Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $37 million in funding for targeted research in materials and chemistry to advance the important emerging field of Quantum Information Science (QIS). "America was a pioneer
…
From insideHPC
GRC to Tailor Datacenter Immersion Cooling for Japanese Market
Today immersion cooling provider GRC announced a new partnership and licensing agreement with Nihon Form Service (NFS), a Tokyo-based manufacturer of IT and communications equipment. Leveraging GRC’s intellectual property, NFS…
From insideHPC
Video: Update on the Exascale Computing Project
In this video, ECP Director Doug Kothe provides an update on the Exascale Computing Project. ECP has mission to ensure that a capable exascale computing ecosystem will come to fruition with the arrival of the nation’s first exascale…
From insideHPC
AI Approach Points to Bright Future for Fusion Energy
Researchers are using Deep Learning techniques on DOE supercomputers to help develop fusion energy. "Unlike classical machine learning methods, FRNN—the first deep learning code applied to disruption prediction—can analyze data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Voice Powered Gaming on Alexa
Have never done voice powered gaming, how well does it work? Another channel that makes you think about when/why voice first can be best, or be engaging or even work at all. We immediately thought about hands-free.
Alexa,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Where is Cortana Going?
Long time follower of the concept of an 'assistant'. Have played with Cortana in a number of forms. TheVerge does a good update below on where it is and they may be going today. Its all about augmentation, now in a number
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Models for IOT
A general kind of thought. But there are specific ideas by type of technology which are useful to think about.
The Internet of Things Needs a Business Model. Here It Is
by Michael Blanding in HBS Working Knowledge
Companies
The…
From Schneier on Security
Software Developers and Security
According to a survey: "68% of the security professionals surveyed believe it's a programmer's job to write secure code, but they also think less than half of developers can spot security holes." And that's a problem. Nearly…
From The Eponymous Pickle
GM Delays Self Driving Car
Now have been asked this question a number of times: When?
GM won't deliver self-driving cars by the end of the year after all
Its self-driving car subsidiary Cruise says more testing is needed.
By Christine Fisher, @cfisherwrites…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Much Data do we Generate?
Usually not a fan of infographics, but this one makes the case well, click through for it. Sounds good, but experience tells me its still not that all the data that you will need.
Domo’s Latest ‘Data Never Sleeps’ Infographic…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hybrid Google Cloud and Blockchain Smart Contract Apps
In the Google Cloud Blog, they suggest we can create cloud-Blockchain hybrids, and integrate them with smart contracts. Want to see some real life examples of this. Pass them along. The examples below the fold are interesting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technology of Choice and Defining Selections
Though I have never worked in the apparel space. I have worked in spaces where consumers make many choices in context, and companies aim to insert new choices to maximize engagement, while strengthening demand by marketing influence…