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 The Eponymous Pickle
Stop and Shop has Robots in the Aisle
How they are being used is still unclear, but this could get customers used to the idea of robots in the aisle. Pictures of the bots show an attempt to be humorous. Perhaps until they got in the way.
Marty the robot may take…
From Schneier on Security
Influence Operations Kill Chain
Influence operations are elusive to define. The Rand Corp.'s definition is as good as any: "the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Home Sensors for Alexa
A good look, many from Samsung. Not enough in the way of collaborative capabilities and skills for these. I want to see more collaboration, predictive AI and usage plans for homes and their operation.
The best smart home
Samsung…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Motivation and Goodwill
Intriguing motivation augmentation via goodwill? How universally and continuously does this work with other goals?
New Tool Shows Goodwill May Trump Profit as Work Motivator
University of Waterloo News
June 11, 2019
Researchers
…
From insideHPC
Micron Starts Volume Production of 1z Nanometer DRAM Process Node
Today Micron Technology announced advancements in DRAM scaling, making Micron the first memory company to begin mass production of 16Gb DDR4 products using 1z nm process technology. "The optimized balance between power and performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brief History of Blockchain
Very nicely done, mostly non-technical. Good visuals of the concepts. With some forward predictions. This emphasizes Blockchain-Ledger rather than cryptocurrency applications, which is good. Unless you are into more speculative…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Galactic Winds with Cholla
Using the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a team of astrophysicists created a set of galactic wind simulations of the highest resolution ever performed. The simulations will allow researchers to gather and…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
And So It Begins–School year 2019 2020
Tomorrow (Monday) I will meet the new freshmen in my study hall. And I’ll finish getting my room ready for the new school year. First day of real classes is Tuesday. And I am not as ready as I would like.
I have a day by day plan…From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Patents a Blockchain Digital Currency
Wal-mart has already experimented with the underlying tech for produce tracking. Is this beyond that? Or an extension of distributed ledger? Intriguing all around.
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DIGITAL CURRENCY VIA BLOCKCHAIN (Wal…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots for Lonliness
Have followed the Japanese eldercare efforts, pushed by Japan's demographics, for some time.
Bringing robots home eases loneliness
By Ikuko Mitsuda / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
The city of Saijo in Ehime Prefecture faces the Seto…
From The Noisy Channel
Martin, thanks for the kind words.
Martin, thanks for the kind words. The TunkRank that Jason Adams implemented has been down for a while. I’m not aware of any other implementation that is available as a service. It would be pretty easy to implement on top of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine to Machine Interfaces
Fascinating piece. ultimately it is all about machines cooperating seamlessly. We take it for granted they will be designed to do that, but its not entirely so ... failure is part of the process and has to be designed for…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (August 17th 2019)
Google may soon release an augmented-reality version of Google Maps for mobile phones. I have always found it difficult to identify the streets I see in an unfamiliar setting, and it looks like Google may be solving this very…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IKEA Going Smart Home Tech
Will be interesting to watch, have an IKEA down the street, will be dropping in to hear of their plans.
Ikea goes all in on smart home tech
‘We are just getting started’
By Thomas Ricker @Trixxy in TheVerge
Ikea is formalizing what…
From insideHPC
HPC Innovation Excellence Award Showcases Physics-based Scientific Discovery
A collaboration that includes researchers from NERSC was recently honored with an HPC Innovation Excellence Award for their work on “Physics-Based Unsupervised Discovery of Coherent Structures in Spatiotemporal Systems.” The
…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Senior HPC Specialist at New York University
New York University is seeking a Senior HPC Specialist in our Job of the Week. "In this role, you will provide technical leadership in design, development, installation and maintenance of hardware and software for the central…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wearable Sweat Sensors
Recall some research using sweat as a means of diagnosing.
Wearable sensors detect what's in your sweat
by Kara Manke, University of California - Berkeley
Needle pricks not your thing? A team of scientists at the University of California…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How AI and 5G will Interact
More data, faster responses, stronger engagement. All likely to follow.
When AI and 5G Combine, Watch For a New Generation of Applications By AI Trends Staff
AI and 5G enable each other. Machine learning thrives on massive…
From The Eponymous Pickle
UPS Invests in Self-Driving Trucks
Could create a considerable change in supply chain operations and improvement.
UPS invests in autonomous truck startup in Bloomberg
UPS has invested an undisclosed sum of money to take a minority stake in the autonomous truck startup…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cashierless Stores Advance
Reducing friction in retail to give an edge and decrease costs.
Cashierless Stores Make Inroads in U.S.
The Wall Street Journal
By John Murawski
U.S. retailers are moving forward with artificial intelligence (AI) systems to track…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Robot Squid Propulsion
Interesting research: The squid robot is powered primarily by compressed air, which it stores in a cylinder in its nose (do squids have noses?). The fins and arms are controlled by pneumatic actuators. When the robot wants to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Echo Auto now in Operation
Just started using Amazon Echo Auto, after waiting nearly a year for a beta. Works well. Previous third part solution sallowed you limited access to your Alexa infrastructure, the newest version is much more complete. From…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Assistant Translation Services by Baidu
One business use of assistants is language translation. While translation today is very good, its still not contextually perfect. But then neither are people. So whats the risk of misunderstandings? Baidu just announced…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Faster threshold queries with cache-sensitive scancount
Suppose that you are given 100 sorted arrays of integers. You can compute their union or their intersection. It is a common setup in data indexing: the integers might be unique identifiers. But there is more than just intersections…
From insideHPC
University of Leicester Adopts Cloudian Object Storage for Backup
Today Cloudian announced that the University of Leicester has deployed the company’s HyperStore object storage system as the foundation of a revamped backup platform. The new solution requires 50% less space and, once fully implemented…
From insideHPC
ACM Announces Winners of 2019 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships
Today ACM announced that Milinda Shayamal Fernando of the University of Utah and Staci Smith of the University of Arizona are the recipients of the 2019 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships. "The fellowship honors…
From insideHPC
GRC Launches Immersion Cooled Micro-Modular Data Center Solution
Today GRC announced the launch of a new micro-modular data center solution, the ICEraQ Micro, a rapidly deployable self-contained 24U server rack that can support up to 50kW of critical IT load and is nearly half the cost of
…
From insideHPC
Video: Big Data is Dead, Long Live Its Replacement
Tom Fisher gave this talk at the Samsung Forum. "Big Data is experiencing a second revolution. This talk will address what’s happened, how it happened and what big data is bridging too. Enterprise companies have to make business…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fujitsu Models and Predicts with Learning
Have met with Fujitsu and was impressed with their analytics work. Also has direct connections to very high powered computing. At first this looked more like a classical simulation analytics approach, but can see how some learning…
From The Eponymous Pickle
George Dyson Talks AI in the Wild
A favorite writer has some provocative ideas in The Edge.
AI That Evolves in the Wild
A Talk By George Dyson [8.14.19]
I’m interested not in domesticated AI—the stuff that people are trying to sell. I'm interested in wild AI—AI
We…