Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Kinds of Questions Can We Answer?
What kinds of questions can data science answer? Fascinating piece by Microsoft Data Scientist. Very fundamental idea. Good way to present the idea to management. " ... This post, authored by Brandon Rohrer, Senior Data Scientist…
From insideHPC
Accelerating Science with SciDB from NERSC
Over at NERSC, Linda Vu writes that the SciDB open source database system is a powerful tool for helping scientists wrangle Big Data. "SciDB is an open source database system designed to store and analyze extremely large array…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
The Growing ECEP Alliance
By: Mark Guzdial The NSF Alliance Expanding Computing Education Pathways has expanded dramatically over the last few months. There are now 11 states in our cohort: Alabama, California, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Seeking Knowledge of Causes
Excellent CSIG talk today on causal Bayesian modeling in healthcare reasoning and elsewhere. Linkedin Group discussion at link here. Slides and talk will be at the link here.Bud Mishra https://cs.nyu.edu/mishra/ from NYU, presented …
From insideHPC
Video: NASA Charts Sea Level Rise
"Sea level rise is one of the most visible signatures of our changing climate, and rising seas have profound impacts on our nation, our economy and all of humanity," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division…
From insideHPC
Rescale Launches Cloud HPC Platform in Europe
Today Rescale announced availability of its Europe region simulation and HPC platforms. As an HPC cloud provider, Rescale offers a software platform and hardware infrastructure for companies to perform scientific and engineering…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computer-Aided Personalized Education Workshop
The CCC Computer-Aided Personalized Education (CAPE) Workshop will be held in Washington, DC on November 12-13th. The demand for education in STEM fields is exploding, and universities and colleges are straining to satisfy this…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A CKO Pushing Change
Always an interest, how do we promote valuable change and expertise, adapted to local context?How NASA’s Chief Knowledge Officer Drives ChangeBy Carla O'Dell on Aug 20, 2015 .. Posted in Knowledge Management Process and Performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technology Making Social Skills more Important
In the HBR: Research: Technology Is Only Making Social Skills More Important by Nicole Torres ... Automation anxiety reached new heights in 2013, when Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, researchers at the Oxford Martin…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Normal OS Privacy Policies
In ArsTechnica: Criticisms about the normal state of how operating systems are communicating back to their builders. Under the guise of helping them improving design, but also useful for leveraging advertising." ... Windows…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
HLF2015 / Foghor Tanshi – This Year’s Women In Technology Pass-It-On Award Winner and HLF Attendee
This blog post originates from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum Blog. The 3rd Heidelberg Laureate Forum is dedicated to mathematics and computer sciences, and takes place August 23-28, 2015. Abel, Fields, Turing and Nevanlinna Laureates…
From Computational Complexity
PACM
I serve on the conference committee of the ACM publications board and we've had extensive discussions on the question of the role of journals in publication venues. A number of CS conferences, though notably not in TCS, are moving…
From Schneier on Security
Defending All the Targets Is Impossible
In the wake of the recent averted mass shooting on the French railroads, officials are realizing that there are just too many potential targets to defend. The sheer number of militant suspects combined with a widening field of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mysteries, Experiences and Value of Unsupervised Learning
I am reminded of a conversation with a manager early in my data analytics career when I mentioned using "unsupervised learning" ... . He asked in essence: "How can you find a result if you don't supervise the process? We…
From insideHPC
Intel Invests in BlueData for Spinning Up Spark Clusters on the Fly
Today Intel Corporation and BlueData announced a broad strategic technology and business collaboration, as well as an additional equity investment in BlueData from Intel Capital. BlueData is a Silicon Valley startup that makes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wi-Fi Aware as Beacon
Don't know where it is currently being used, but Wi-Fi Aware can be used like a beacon in retail like those using Bluetooth Smart, the technology behind Apple iBeacon and Google Eddystone. We experimented with Wi-Fi triangulation…
From insideHPC
From Grand Challenges to Critical Workflows
Geert Wenes writes in the Cray Blog that the next generation of Grand Challenges will focus on critical workflows for Exascale. "For every historical HPC grand challenge application, there is now a critical dependency on a series…
From The Eponymous Pickle
GMDC Connection
Brought back to my attention: GMDC " ... GMDC is the premier nonprofit global trade association dedicated to serving Health Beauty Wellness and General Merchandise Retailers, Wholesalers and Suppliers. GMDC promotes critical…
From insideHPC
Video: Parallella – The Most Energy Efficient Supercomputer on the Planet
"Supercomputing should be available for everyone who wants it. With that mission in mind, a team of engineers created Parallella, an 18-core supercomputer that’s a little bigger than a credit card. Parallella is open source hardware…
From insideHPC
China May Develop Two 100 Petaflop Machines Within a Year
"Within the next 12 months, China expects to be operating not one but two 100 Petaflop computers, each containing (different) Chinese-made processors, and both coming on stream about a year before the United States’ 100 Petaflop…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Understanding the Google computer, and making it better
The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Internet-based services that we have all come to love (e.g., search, email, social networks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Aha Moment and Working Memory
Fascinating. Have had a handful of such aha moments. Never tried to manage them. How can that be done, or should it be? How are our devices now a part of working memory? Looking at the use of working memory. In:…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Making Smarter Long term Decisions
In K@W: A classic issue. And with the rocking of the market lately, an important one.If we were rational, we would make choices based on our long-term goals, not our short-term desires. Spoiler alert: We’re not, and we don…
From The Eponymous Pickle
CSIG Algorithm
CSIG "Algorithm" and tracking cognitive system performance levelsThe CSIG (Cognitive Systems Institute Group) is interested in tracking cognitive computing components and their performance relative to novice and expert humanCSIG…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Real Time Computing
Interesting piece on real time computing and in particular how it relates to the Internet of Things. Real time interaction with data means more than just the need for faster computers and real time data, it also means knowing…
From Schneier on Security
Regularities in Android Lock Patterns
Interesting: Marte Løge, a 2015 graduate of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, recently collected and analyzed almost 4,000 ALPs as part of her master's thesis. She found that a large percentage of them -- 44…
From insideHPC
SDSC Gets One-year Extension for Gordon Supercomputer
The National Science Foundation has awarded the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) a one-year extension to continue operating its Gordon supercomputer, providing continued access to the cluster for a wide range of researchers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Common Sense Reasoning in Cognitive AI
Excellent piece in the ACM. You need membership to read the full article, but even the abstract introduction makes the point very well. To intelligently reason about the real world you need to have at hand a large amount of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
YouTube Gaming Arrives
Launching tomorrow. YouTube streaming games. A place for for short interactive training games? Ways to score to indicate results? Ease of rewinding and reviewing results. Rules to create a context for specifics. Games…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Are You Ever Really Ready?
Last year I changed (improved I hope) every PowerPoint deck I used based on how the presentation when and how I realized I could make things more clear. Over the summer I revisited many of them and improved them some more. This…