Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2019
From Putting People First
[Book] Behavioural macroeconomics
![[Book] Behavioural macroeconomics](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
Behavioural Macroeconomics: Theory and Policy Paul De Grauwe and Yuemei Ji Oxford University Press October 2019, 256 pages Modern macroeconomics has been based on the paradigm of the rational individual capable of understanding…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Vulnerabilities in Squid Server
It's always nice when I can combine squid and security: Multiple versions of the Squid web proxy cache server built with Basic Authentication features are currently vulnerable to code execution and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Battery-Free Sensors Underwater with Piezoelectricity
Another example of new ways to add power sources. I recall piezoelectric methods being suggested as gained from customers walking across a floor. Harvesting electric power. Too low power in that case, it turned out. But…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Russian Fedor Robot Assistant in the ISS
Much in the press this week. Looks to be of real value based on the description. Unclear here if this is voice driven and other specifics. Note it is communicating its activities, will be checking on that. Note also the previous…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa with Skill Flow Creation. And Beyond?
Alexa Dev announces a way to create skill flow for games, stories. When I saw this I thought, could this also be used to develop skills based on business process flow? Thinking that. Your thoughts? If I think so I will make…
From insideHPC
White Paper: Basement Supercomputer beats Amazon EC2 on Cost and Performance
The good folks at Basement Supercomputing have published a white paper comparing one of the company's on-prem Limulus personal HPC appliance to Amazon EC2 Cloud instances. The economics are quite interesting. "In this careful…
From insideHPC
IBM Cloud to Provide Quantum-safe Cryptography in 2020
Quantum Computing holds tremendous promise, but it could also put today's cryptographic-based security systems at risk. Enter IBM, who just announced plans to provide quantum-safe cryptography services on the IBM public cloud…
From insideHPC
Video: Three Perspectives on Message Passing
Robert Harrison from Brookhaven gave this talk at the MVAPICH User Group. "MADNESS, TESSE/EPEXA, and MolSSI are three quite different large and long-lived projects that provide different perspectives and driving needs for the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Analysis of IOTA
Mentioned I was looking at the blockchain IOTA sometime back, was just pointed to this analysis that I had missed: Has pointers to much more:
Analysis of IOTA By Marvin Neuefeind in Medium
One of the most popular coins, which…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visions of the Future, Then and Now
Quite a considerable look at how future has been predicted, why were they so accurate? what sources can we look at today? As a futurist myself, always seeking sources. Read it:
Futurology: How a group of visionaries predicted…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blockchain for Hotel Commissions
Another indication of IBM working strongly in this space. Had not heard this particular kind of application before. And also new to the hospitality space.
Travelport, IBM Collaborate on Blockchain for Hotel Commissions
Travelport…
From Schneier on Security
License Plate "NULL"
There was a DefCon talk by someone with the vanity plate "NULL." The California system assigned him every ticket with no license plate: $12,000. Although the initial $12,000-worth of fines were removed, the private company that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ultimate ID: Facial Recognition?
Where you would expect it, but the results are still less than perfect. And where it is mostly likely to be spoofed for direct fraud.
Facial Recognition Making Its Way in Banking By AI Trends Staff
Facial recognition technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Good Data Science Examples
A number of good inspirational examples. Needs more tech details, but still useful.
Remarkable Applications of Data Science
Posted by Sudhanshu Ahuja in DSC
We are living in a time of slow yet steady insurgence of data science…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Reducing Complexity with Cluster Management from Bright Computing
In this Conversations in the Cloud podcast, Lee Carter from Bright Computing offers comprehensive software for deploying, managing, and monitoring clustered infrastructure, in the data center or the cloud. "Looking forward, Lee…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Webinar: Driving Business Outcomes with AI
Leaders in the area of machine learning and AI talk goals and workflow:
On-Demand Webinar
Enterprises understand that driving business outcomes with machine learning and AI will soon become a critical driver for success. Yet, many…
From insideHPC
Silence the Critics: Take our Quick Survey on HPC Cloud
A recent report from Hyperion Research indicate that as much as 10 percent of HPC workloads are already in cloud and that 70 percent of HPC centers are running some jobs in public clouds. Are these numbers indicative of what
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What will Quantum Computing Mean?
A largely non-technical view of what Quantum Computing will mean. Our own minor investigations looked at how very complex combinatorial problems (problems with many, many solutions) that might then be solved with these methods…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Contract Languages of Distributed Ledgers
Quite worthwhile piece in the 'smart contract' blockchain space, in Financial industry, examining:
In ACM Queue:
Databases
Download PDF version of this article PDF August 19, 2019
Volume 17, issue 3
Case Study
DAML: The Contract…
From insideHPC
How the European Processor Initiative is Leveraging RISC-V for the Future of Supercomputing
In this special guest feature, Calista Redmond writes that the European Processor Initiative is designing an HPC accelerator based on RISC-V. "The accelerator will be designed for high throughput and power efficiency within the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Building more Private Web: Privacy Sandbox
Google talks about its approaches to a more private, yet financially sustainable Web.
Building a more private web By Justin Schuh Director, Chrome Engineering
Published Aug 22, 2019
Privacy is paramount to us, in everything
Technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shape of Data Implies its Uses
Recall hearing about this approach in training we took. Making it easier to connect key data to analytics. Shape constraint languages.
Graph Database ‘Shapes’ Data By George Leopold in Datanami
A semantic graph database
Franz…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Response to NITRD RFI “Information on Update to Strategic Computing Objectives”
The following post was contributed by CCC Director, Ann Schwartz Drobnis. The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) National Coordination Office (NCO), on behalf of Federal agencies and the…
From insideHPC
Aitken Supercomputer from HPE to Support NASA Moon Missions
A new HPE supercomputer at NASA’s Ames Research Center will run modeling and simulation workloads for lunar landings. The 3.69 Petaflop "Aitken" system is a custom-designed supercomputer will support modeling and simulations
…
From insideHPC
Containerized Convergence of Big Data and Big Compute
Christian Kniep gave this talk at HPCKP'19. "This talk will dissect the convergence by refreshing the audiences’ memory on what containerization is about, segueing into why AI/ML workloads are leading to fully fledged HPC applications…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What I Want from Computer Science Education Professional Development
The CSTA 2020 Call for Proposals is out and as usual it has me thinking. Two questions come to mind. One is, what can/should I propose to present? The other question is what do I want to learn? I think I have been to everyI…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowd Sources Autonomous Vehicle Training
From Ideaconnection, offer of sale or licensing of a US patent:
Crowd-sourced Autonomous Vehicle Training
Definitions: When driving, human drivers encounter non-events (expected events like traffic lights turning red) as well
Events…
From Schneier on Security
Modifying a Tesla to Become a Surveillance Platform
From DefCon: At the Defcon hacker conference today, security researcher Truman Kain debuted what he calls the Surveillance Detection Scout. The DIY computer fits into the middle console of a Tesla Model S or Model 3, plugs into…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Vicki Davis Interviews Alfred Thompson
Over the summer Vicki Davis interviewed me for her Ten Minute Podcast. Vicki and I have been friends for a number of years and it is always a pleasure to talk with her. We talked about a number of things including Project-based…
From insideHPC
Video: Xilinx Unveils World’s Largest FPGA
Today Xilinx announced the expansion of its 16 nanometer (nm) Virtex UltraScale+ family to now include the world’s largest FPGA — the Virtex UltraScale+ VU19P. With 35 billion transistors, the VU19P provides the highest logic…