Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2018
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alternatives to Quantum Recommendation
From insideHPC
Dr. Eng Lim Goh from HPE on the latest trends in Machine Learning, Simulation, and AI
In this fireside chat from ISC 2018, Dr. Eng Lim Goh from HPE describes the latest trends in Machine Learning, Simulation, and AI. "AI can amplify human capabilities and turn exponentially growing data into insight, action, and…
From insideHPC
Get into HPC with the Altair Global Startup Program
Today Altair announced the immediate availability of its simulation-driven innovation software to qualified startup companies through its newly formed Altair Startup Program. Tailored specifically to the unique needs of the startup…
From insideHPC
Mellanox Rolls Out World’s Fastest Ethernet Storage Fabric Controller
Today Mellanox rolled out new BlueField-based storage controllers, offering "ultra-high performance" for Ethernet Storage Fabrics. “These BlueField storage controllers tightly-integrate flash connectivity, networking, and Arm…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Discusses the IO500 Benchmark Suite with John Bent
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team talks to John Bent from the IO500 committee about why he and a team of I/O professionals created the IO500 benchmark suite. The second IO500 list was revealed at ISC 2018 in Frankfurt,…
From The Noisy Channel
Why is it so hard to sort by price?
A common use case for online shopping is searching for products — say, coffee makers — and then sorting the results by price, from low to high, in order to find a cheap one. Surprisingly, this use case fails on most ecommerce…
From insideHPC
NVMe Flash: A New Level of High-Performance Data Consistency for the World’s Most Demanding Workloads
The pace of today’s data growth is staggering, and it's keeping IT specialists on their toes. This guest post from Kingston Technology explores how innovation in storage like NVMe are working to keep up with today's most demanding…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Why The Data can be Very Wrong
Colleague Kaiser Fung on why the data can be very wrong, or at least very fragile. His site is required.
Do we really know what the data are measuring? Hint: no
The tech industry has turned us into an omni-surveillance society…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking the McDonald's Monopoly Sweepstakes
Long and interesting story -- now two decades old -- of massive fraud perpetrated against the McDonald's Monopoly sweepstakes. The central fraudster was the person in charge of securing the winning tickets....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Developers Machine Learning Glossary
Google Developers Machine Learning Glossary
Interesting and lengthy glossary of Machine Learning terms, which spills over into statistics and AI. Most definitions are not overly technical. Useful starting point for understanding…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Executive Decisions
I have used the article below again for a presentation, so I am repeating it's reference below:
Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Executive Decision Making?
Big Idea: Competing With Data & AnalyticsBlog
By Sam Ransbotham
For the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Datalog.ai Providing Automated Intelligence
Brought to my attention:
By Datalog.ai |a Managed Ventures Company Datalog.ai
Leading organizations are taking advantage of automated intelligence to solve their key business challenges.
You can gain superior business outcomes…
From insideHPC
DARPA Selects Research Projects for Next-Gen Processing Technology
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has announced the academic and industry research groups selected to develop new computing technologies to drive computing performance post Moore’s Law. "These projects hope to…
From insideHPC
Characterizing Faults, Errors and Failures in Extreme-Scale Computing Systems
Christian Engelmann from ORNL gave this talk at PASC18. "Building a reliable supercomputer that achieves the expected performance within a given cost budget and providing efficiency and correctness during operation in the presence…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will G Suite plus Cisco Compete with Microsoft?
Microsoft has established usage and lots of data in the case of Linkedin. Skype for easy communications. So does Cisco plus Google compete? Have used both groups extensively. Maybe in deep learning and Cloud, but not
Cisco…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Computer Science and Farming
One of the things I tell students is that computer science is relevant to a lot of careers that they may not think of at first. An announcement I read last week and a visit to a farm reminded me of that this past week.
The article…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google and Shopify vs Amazon
Google and Shopify in Retailwire by Matthew Stern
Google is making it easier for retailers and brands to get their ads out on some of the media giant’s most popular platforms, and it’s using Shopify to do it.
Google is rolling…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Amazon is Doing to Keep the Lead
Enticing lots more developers. I get enticements most every week. They have a good approach to supporting them. Now lets come up with some really novel skills.
What Amazon Is Doing To Keep Alexa In The Lead By Andria Cheng…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Needs Explaining
All analytics needs explaining. But primarily, why is what we have discovered as a pattern here trustable as a pattern in the future? And will that discovered pattern be useful in some business process today or in the future…
From insideHPC
The Search for Gravitational Waves
In this video from PASC18, Alexander Nitz from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany presents: The Search for Gravitational Waves. "The LIGO and Virgo detectors have completed a prolific observation run…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: HPC Software Developer at the Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) Group
The Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) Group in Champaign, Illinois is seeking an HPC Software Developer our Job of the Week. "The HPC Software Developer will develop software for the Hierarchical Data Format v5 (HDF5) library and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Responsibility for Program Output
Not quite understanding what they mean by responsibility here, hard to know how it will produce unexpected results. Which might also diminish use of analytics as well. Certainly you could promote an awareness of the further…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Failing Brand Engagement
Reporting low engagement levels for social. A trend or more local behavior?
When it comes to Brand Engagement, Social Media is Failing Brands and Influencers.
Manuel Solis - in CustomerThink
Recently, Forrester Research (one…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (August 4th, 2018)
About 80% of the ocean remains unmapped and unexplored. Even a mild concussion (a fall on your head) can double your risk of dementia (e.g., Alzheimer’s). Apple is selling approximatively two smart watches for each laptop. And…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
School is Getting Close and Teachers Are Getting Ready
Two weeks from today I return to school for teacher orientation. Students come in the next week. 
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Calamari Squid Catching Prey
The calamari squid grabs prey three feet away with its fast tentacles. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here....
From Schneier on Security
Three of My Books Are Available in DRM-Free E-Book Format
Humble Bundle sells groups of e-books at ridiculously low prices, DRM free. This month, the bundles are all Wiley titles, including three of my books: Applied Cryptography, Secrets and Lies, and Cryptography Engineering. $15…
From insideHPC
Intel Media SDK to Build Cross-Platform High-Quality Video Workflows
The latest release of the Intel® Media SDK offers a single, cross-platform, GPU-enabled API for building optimized media and video applications from PC’s to workstations and into the cloud.
The post Intel Media SDK to Build Cross…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Teaching Languages with AI Assistance
This week's CSIG talk featured Lewis Johnson of Alelo, a company that has an online AI assisted language teaching system. Natural language voice language processing is used. The assistance includes tracking progress, and analyzing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Interesting Sounds Podcast
Discovered a podcast called 'Twenty Thousand Hertz', which is an examination of 'the most interesting stories of the most interesting sounds' by Dallas Taylor. There I learned about sound fatigue and sound scape design inavailable…