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 Schneier on Security
Attorney General Barr and Encryption
Last month, Attorney General William Barr gave a major speech on encryption policywhat is commonly known as "going dark." Speaking at Fordham University in New York, he admitted that adding backdoors decreases security but that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Geopolitics of AI
Continuing to see more AI development from China. This AcAm article provides a non technical article.
The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence
As the U.S. and China vie for global influence, AI will be central to the balance
By…
From Universal Acceptance Steering Group
Breaking the Linguistic Barriers to Access the Internet
The 9th Language and Technology Conference (LTC 2019) published a paper from members of the UASG. The paper explains IDNs, which are domain names in local languages that make it easier for the majority of the world's population…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Baidu Open Sources its Language Understanding
In O'Reilly:
Baidu has open-sourced its natural language understanding framework, ERNIE 2.0 (enhanced representation through knowledge integration) and the ERNIE 2.0 model, a pretrained language-understanding model that achieved…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nike Links RFID to Predictive Analytics for Inventory
Good example of sensors and analytics and transparency in the supply chain.
Nike to marry predictive analytics and RFID to optimize inventory performance
by Tom Ryan in Retailwire plus expert commentary.
Nike Inc. has acquired Celect…
From insideHPC
IBM Deploys Triton AI Supercomputer at University of Miami
Today the University of Miami (UM) announced that their new Triton supercomputer is installed and helping their researchers explore new frontiers of science. The new supercomputer will be UM’s first GPU-accelerated HPC system…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
ACM SIGARCH BLOG: Increasing Your Research Impact
The following blog was originally posted in ACM SIGARCH on August 12, 2019. It is written by Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair Mark D. Hill from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Hill is the recipient of the 2019…
From insideHPC
Cray Shasta Software to Power Exascale Era
Today Cray a new, open and extensible software platform to address the growing need for supercomputing across government and private industries. As advanced simulation, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital transformation
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More Aims at Explainable AI
More interesting moves in providing explanation to AI. Here from Ga Tech. As in the previous recent post, this asks the question: What does explainable mean? And to whom in what context? Simplicity is good, if everyone…
From insideHPC
Video: Providing a National Software Repository for Interactive HPC
Lance Wilson from Monash University gave this talk at the Singularity User Group. "The repository for the build files is public and is run in the same way as a software development project. In addition to the build files being…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NVidia Releases Advanced Chatbot Software
We built chatbots in the 80s that worked very well, though never well enough for general applicability for general acceptance, use and updating. Now Nvidia is releasing new capabilities which are apparently impressive. Continuing…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Who will benefit from Intel dropping Omni-Path?
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team takes a close look at the history of High Performance Interconnects, recent news, and how the market is changing profoundly. "The departure of Intel from this segment is good news for
…
From insideHPC
Cray to Build El Capitan Exascale Supercomputer at LLNL
Today the Department of Energy announced that Cray will build the NNSA’s first exascale supercomputer, “El Capitan.” To be hosted at LLNL, El Capitan will have a peak performance of more than 1.5 exaflops and an anticipated delivery…
From BLOG@CACM
We Should Stop Saying 'Language Independent.' We Don't Know How To Do That
We know how to make multi-lingual pseudocode-based assessments, not language-independent assessments.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphone Biological Virus Scanner
Not computer viruses, but biological viruses Like the idea of physical sensors being attached to now very powerful devices/sensors in the form of smartphones. Allowing the power to be readily put in many hands.
Smartphone…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft: How Hololens is used by Airbus
Good example of the use of Mixed/Augmented reality approaches in heavy industry. Expect to see more of these to emerge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxjC4Z05qh8 Video overview of use
Airbus drives innovation and accelerates…
From Schneier on Security
Exploiting GDPR to Get Private Information
A researcher abused the GDPR to get information on his fiancee: It is one of the first tests of its kind to exploit the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in May 2018. The law shortened the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Daily Wireless Guide
Brought to my attention:
2019 Internet Statistics, Trends & Data
Looking for the most up-to-date internet usage statistics for 2019?
You’ve come to the right place. Our team has spent hundred of hours putting together this massive…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM, Tata Join Hedera Hashgraph Council
More indication that IBM is serious about Blockchain. Also link with Tata
From Reuters.
IBM, India's Tata join U.S. tech platform's governing council. International Business Machines Corp and Tata Communications have joined
And…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Trump Administration Issues Plan for Federal Engagement in AI Technical Standards
Today, the Trump Administration, through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), issued a plan for Federal engagement in the development of technical standards for artificial intelligence (AI). The plan was…
From The Eponymous Pickle
FDA Seeks Virtual Heart
Much akin to things like virtual twins, and high quality simulation systems. I remember work at USCD that aimed at constructing whole body systems that contained models of key components. we provided some support. Might be…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visa Tests AI to Detect Fraud
An area I always thought would be ideal. Considering the idea now in an emerging architecture that would provide both data for such an analysis, as well as the structure of existing interactions. The card companies have
Visa…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
What else could CCC offer?
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) wants to know what resources you find most valuable and what else we could offer. Please fill out the form below and let us know! Loading…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on Throttle vs Touchscreen Control
This came to my attention recently, whats the best kind of basic mobility control?
The US Navy says no to touchscreens—maybe automakers should too
Overly complex touchscreen systems were blamed in recent NTSB report.
By Jonathan…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Explainable AI Toolkit
ZDnet poses a good question: Whats a good explanation? Its a matter of context. Algorithms are often brought up because they seem simple .... just a short statement of 'truth' that can be inserted anywhere. But, they are…
From insideHPC
OSS Steps Up with AMD EPYC 7002 Series Processor for ‘AI on the Fly’
One Stop Systems just unveiled its comprehensive portfolio of PCIe Gen 4 expansion building blocks supporting servers based on the new AMD EPYC 7002 processor. "We are pleased to work with AMD to lead the market transition to…
From insideHPC
Registration Opens for HPC User Forums in Switzerland and Scotland
The HPC User Forum Steering Committee and Hyperion Research invite interested HPC community members to reserve a seat at one or both HPC User Forum meetings that will take place during the same week at CSCS (the Swiss National…
From insideHPC
Running AI and HPC Workloads Together on Existing Infrastructure Enhances Return on System Investments
Because HPC technologies today offer substantially more power and speed than their legacy predecessors, enterprises and research institutions benefit from combining AI and HPC workloads on a single system. This sponsored post…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Supercomputing and Sensors at ARL
In this podcast from the Army Research Laboratory, lab director Dr. Phil Perconti and computer scientist Ross Adelman discuss future of supercomputing and sensors. "Imagine having a complete understanding of what's inside a building…
From Schneier on Security
Evaluating the NSA's Telephony Metadata Program
Interesting analysis: "Examining the Anomalies, Explaining the Value: Should the USA FREEDOM Act's Metadata Program be Extended?" by Susan Landau and Asaf Lubin. Abstract: The telephony metadata program which was authorized under…