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 U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Comments On Intersection Of Big Data And Consumer Privacy
Yesterday USACM responded to a Request for Comment from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). In response to a recommendation in the Administration’s Big Data report released in May, the NTIA…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Techsolve's Miniviz
Local company Techsolve's software Miniviz helps companies understand if their machine tools are operating efficiently. Enables small and medium sized companies to make better decisions about maintenance and reliability. We…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
WIFIRE helps to prevent wildfires
As the number and scale of West Coast wildfires continue to increase, threatened communities are struggling to figure out what to do. High winds can shift the direction of a fire causing emergency evacuations of communities. …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Byron Sharp on Behavioral Economics
Excellent piece with lots of useful cautions . Including a good criticism of neuromarketing. See also correspondent Byron Sharp's excellent book: How Brands Grow. And his site." ... Too much has been written claiming that ‘behavioural…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon's 3D Printing Store
Just took a look. This points to the broader commercializing of 3D Printing. Shop the Future? The offerings still look fairly trivial, but this gives you an idea about what can be done with the technology.
From The Eponymous Pickle
China's Digital Transformation
Good McKinsey piece, with some interesting statistics::China’s digital transformationWith more than 600 million users, China is already the world’s largest Internet market, but its economy is on the cusp of an even greater transformation…
From BLOG@CACM
Hadoop at a Crossroads?
A few facts and opinions and a couple of announcements, with a prediction on where the "Hadoop stack" might be going.
From Geeking with Greg
Quick links
What caught my attention lately: Great idea for walking directions: "At times, we do not [want] the fastest route ... When walking, we generally prefer tiny streets with trees over large avenues with cars ... [We] suggest routes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Walmart.com Re-designs
In Retailwire: Making a move to look and work more like Amazon. " ... Walmart.com saw its (online) sales rise 27 percent last quarter following a 30 percent increase in 2013, according to Internet Retailer. Now, Walmart's online…
From Computational Complexity
How I know Moneyball is a true story. Do we clean up theorems and life too much?
A few years ago I saw the movie Moneyball about how the Oakland A's used intelligent statistics to... win? No, but to do better-than-expected. Even if I didn't know it was a true story I would have assumed it was because the…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
It's Hard To Make Easy Projects
I’ve been working on my lesson plans for this year and one thing I always struggle with is creating projects. Oh I have lots in my tool box but I am always looking for something new and more interesting. In many ways the hardest…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Game to Map the Brain: Eyewire
One of a number of crowdsourcing games out there in cosmology, genetics and beyond. Several have been around for many years. I like the idea, but have there been actual successes? The combinatorial context of these problems…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Emoticons and Neuroscience
Do emoticons have a neuroscience? How are they different than the use of text? I thought I had noticed that there were fewer of them out in the wild these days. But my experience is skewed. In FastCoDesign: " ... Neuroscience…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Store as the Next Killer App
Discovered WayFind: A conversation about the customer experience: Here talking about the use of the use of the retail store as the next killer App. " ... “Buy online, pickup in store.” It’s an ungainly acronym but a very powerful…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Taking an Opportunity View
In the HBR, may require registration: " ... The innovative ideas that led to the companies Nest and Square started when their founders sought to improve everyday items, writes Warren Berger, author of "A More Beautiful Question…
From Schneier on Security
Ubiquitous Surveillance in Singapore
Good essay...
From Schneier on Security
SynoLocker Ransomware Demands Bitcoins
Network-attached storage devices made by Synology are being attacked, and their data encrypted, by ransomware that demands $350 in bitcoins (payable anonymously via Tor) for the decryption key. As of this moment, there's no patch…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Living Our Life in Stories
In The Edge: Stories as problem resolution narratives. " ... We think of stories as a wildly creative art form but within that creativity and that diversity there is a lot of conformity. Stories are very predictable. No matter…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Coursera Consumer Neuromarketing Course
Via the Copenhagen Business School, no background required. Worked with the CBS in the past in this context.An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience & NeuromarketingThis course will introduce you to the multidisciplinary field…
From BLOG@CACM
Typing Without Typing
Type inference made practical for an object-oriented/functional programming language.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Value of Un-Siloed Data is Exponential
In Adage: CEO of AOL Platforms makes some interesting comments on Innovation and the value of data. Like inertia stifles innovation .... (Well yes) And on data: " ... The value of data is exponential. Too many marketers…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Announces New Leadership
ACM President Alex Wolf has appointed Ed Felten as Chair and Stuart Shapiro and Jeremy Epstein as Co-Vice Chairs of the ACM U.S. Public Policy Council. Alex Wolf thanked Eugene Spafford for his 16 years of dedicated service leading…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
ACM Europe Council and U.S. Public Policy Council Address Computing Issues in EU-US Free Trade Agreement
The ACM Europe Council and the ACM U.S. Public Policy Council presented a consensus position on policy issues relevant to the computing field to negotiators of a new EU-U.S. free trade agreement. ACM Europe Council Chair Fabrizio…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Silent Risk
A colleague writes:" ... For those interested in the mathematical beauty of highly unlikely but very impactful events : a draft version (for comments) of Silent Risk, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's upcoming book, is available for download…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Windows 8
I have been using Windows 8 for some time, have gotten used to its oddities, but based on that experience and what I have heard from more casual users, it is a serious failure. Corporate and personal. The market agrees.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Recent ISAT/DARPA Workshop on Brain: Analysis Synthesis Computation
The following is a special contribution to this blog by by CCC Executive Council Member Mark Hill and workshop organizers Hanspeter Pfister, An Wang Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied…
From Schneier on Security
Former NSA Director Patenting Computer Security Techniques
Former NSA Director Keith Alexander is patenting a variety of techniques to protect computer networks. We're supposed to believe that he developed these on his own time and they have nothing to do with the work he did at the…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 4 August 2014
It was both a slow week and a busy week last week. Slow online for the most part. There were a couple of big events that friends of mine were at but I was home. Microsoft had the world wide finals of the Imagine Cup in Redmond…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Nebula
A nebula that looks like a squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Diagonalization Without Sets
Avoiding actual infinities Carl Gauss is of course beyond famous, but he had a view of infinity that was based on old ideas. He once wrote in a letter to Heinrich Schumacher in 1831: so protestiere ich zuvörderst gegen den Gebrauch…