Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drone Security
In CNN Money: Since this piece was written in March it seems the presence of drones is expected. " ... The next threat to your privacy could be hovering over head while you walk down the street. Hackers have developed a drone…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innovation and Problem Solving
This is from the Knowledge@Wharton High School edition. Following it now. Nicely done podcasts and text. Wish I had access to this kind of information back then. Covers real people doing real things today. Not just educational…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Balance of Rules in Business Process Models
In the APQC Blog: A space we looked at to try to balance process models using analytics. Or analytics can also be embedded into the rules. Fewer, simpler rules are better. If only to manage them effectively. Good piece…
From The Eponymous Pickle
BBC Overviews Augmented Reality
A good view in the BBC of the current state of augmented reality and mention of a number of real commercial applications in place. For example, the IKEA catalog, previously covered in this space. See also AugmentedPixels, aMetaio…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Proteins and the Brain-Computer Interface
There's a protein in squid that might be useful in getting biological circuits to talk to computer circuits. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technical State of the Internet of Things
In the Cisco Blog: A lengthy look at some of the technical underpinning of the Internet of Things from Cisco's perspective. Links to a number of video snippets and further information as well. Worth looking at.
From Schneier on Security
Eavesdropping by Visual Vibrations
Researchers are able to recover sound through soundproof glass by recording the vibrations of a plastic bag. Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing…
From Apophenia
What Is an Honorable Response to Israel/Gaza?
In 1968, Walter Cronkite did the unthinkable. After visiting Vietnam to assess the state of the war in light of the Tet Offensive, he produced documentary coverage of the situation. And then, to the shock of many, he concluded…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Laplace’s Demon
Demons and other curiosities Pierre-Simon Laplace was a French scientist, perhaps one of the greatest ever, French or otherwise. His work affected the way we look at both mathematics and physics, among other areas of science.…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Google's Report on Women in Computer Science, and What it Means for Me
A couple of months ago, Google came out with a report called Women Who Choose Computer Science — What Really Matters. It details a study Google conducted "to identify and understand the factors that influence young women’sCreating…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Art of Being Discontinuous
Set of slides that talks about the process of being discontinuous. Some good thoughts. With recommendations about how to include this in strategic thinking. By Ian McCarthy, Professor of Technology and Operations Management…
From Schneier on Security
Social Engineering a Telemarketer
Okay, this is funny....
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Evaluation Report Comparing Industry vs. Academic Postdocs in Computing is Available
The following is a special contribution to this blog by Jane Stout, Director of CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP). The CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) has published a report on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Proposing a Metadata of Expertise
A conversation brought up a topic which we called the 'Metadata of Expertise'. Data that relates directly to the description of expertise. A simplistic example might be a trend line extracted from sales data, which would…
From Putting People First
Dropbox’s Head of Design on the dawn of personalized products
Soleio Cuervo, design lead at Dropbox, spends his time thinking of new ways for products to understand our needs and wants in real time. After years of firsthand work and observation, Cuervo has seen four ingredients emerge that…
From Putting People First
Can technology really change your habits?
Downloading an app won’t get you to change your habits. Vivian Giang writes on the science of what will. “There are three kinds of behavioral changes, according to Arun Sundararajan, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business…
From Putting People First
No time to think
Nowadays, people can keep negative thoughts at bay with a frenzy of activity. Kate Murphy writes on the consequences in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times. “You can’t solve or let go of problems if you don’t allow…
From Computational Complexity
The n^{1/3} barrier for 2-server PIR's broken! A lesson for us all!
Recall: PIR stands for Private Information Retrieval. Here is the model: A database is an n-bit string (my wife tells me this is not true). The user wants to find the ith bit without the database knowing what bit the user wants…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Why You Need Parentheses
A friend posted the following image on Facebook. You’ve probably seen like it. Actually I have posted similar myself.The result, as you might expect, was people arguing over the answer. Is it 9 or is it 1? Obviously it is. Idouble…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neurosynaptic Chips
Just announced in IBM Research: " ... What is a cognitive chip? The latest SyNAPSE chip, introduced on August 7, 2014, has the potential to transform mobility by spurring innovation around an entirely new class of applications…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative
Their latest newsletter. Subscribe. I follow them and write about their work from time to time, always something interesting to see. Most recently results from symposia. (not online here, but you can likely ask for thePurchase…
From Schneier on Security
The US Intelligence Community has a Third Leaker
Ever since The Intercept published this story about the US government's Terrorist Screening Database, the press has been writing about a "second leaker": The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Testing Mobile App Tracking
In Adage: Testing a method for App tracking on mobile browsers. " ... Google has come up with a way to overcome the ad-targeting gap between mobile web visitors and mobile app users, according to people familiar with the matter…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Training at University of Cincinnati
The University of Cincinnati Center for Business Analytics is pleased to announce its fall continuing education offerings. These two-day courses will be offered at the Kingsgate Marriott Conference Center at the University of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Vint Cerf on the Internet
From The Eponymous Pickle
Text Analytics for Everyone
In UXMag: Our own early experience with text analytics was that it can be readily done with today's software, but coming to specific conclusions can be more difficult. Using some of the visual methods shown can provide starting…
From Schneier on Security
Over a Billion Passwords Stolen?
I've been doing way too many media interviews over this weird New York Times story that a Russian criminal gang has stolen over 1.2 billion passwords. As expected, the hype is pretty high over this. But from the beginning, the…
From Wild WebMink
Is Microsoft To Blame For Malware?
Originally posted on Meshed Insights & Knowledge:The action law enforcement services have taken against the GameOver-Zeus malware syndicate is great news for a change. In the UK, this was communicated with typical tabloid alarmism…
From Apophenia
Why Jane Doe doesn’t get to be a sex trafficking victim
In detailing the story of “Jane Doe,” a 16-year-old transgender youth stuck in an adult prison in Connecticut for over six weeks without even being charged, Shane Bauer at Mother Jones steps back to describe the context in which…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Thousands in Cash Prizes Available in Verizon Innovative App Challenge
Student teams across the nation are now invited to create novel ideas for the mobile app marketplace in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge. The competition offers middle and high school students the opportunity to apply their…