Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2015
From insideHPC
Transcript: Randy Bryant from the White House OSTP Discusses the NSCI Initiative
In this video from the 2015 HPC User Forum, Randy Bryant, from the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) discusses National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI). Established by an Executive Order by President…
From insideHPC
Transcript: Irene Qualters from the NSF Discusses the NSCI Initiative
In this video from the 2015 HPC User Forum, Irene Qualters from the National Science Foundation discusses National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI). Established by an Executive Order by President Obama, NSCI has a mission…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Obstacles to Digital Customer Care
In McKinsey:Overcoming obstacles to digital customer careProviding superior digital customer care, or e-care, can lower costs and increase customer satisfaction. Yet it’s easier said than done. ... "
From Schneier on Security
Programming Errors Weaken bcrypt Hashes of Ashley Madison Passwords
Ashley Madison encrypted users' passwords using the bcrypt function. It's a secure password-encryption function, but two implemention programming mistakes allows millions of passwords to be easily decrypted. Ars Technica explains…
From insideHPC
ISC Cloud & Big Data: From Banking to Personalized Medicine
In this special guest feature, Tom Wilkie from Scientific Computing World looks at some issues of life and death that will be discussed at the upcoming ISC Cloud and Big Data conference in Frankfurt.
The post ISC Cloud & BiginsideHPC…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting links 14 September 2015
Last week was fun. I have great students. One thing I did this week was to create a scaffold program for my Honors Programming students. Just a basic user interface so what we could focus on the code behind – specifically ifFortunately…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Agreeing on Collaboration
Makes much sense to agree ahead of time how you will collaborate. In HBR:" .... Most of us want to do a good job and work well together. But when individuals’ rules of conduct are unspoken, motives are often misinterpreted (…
From Computational Complexity
An Open(?) Question about Prime Producting Polynomials Part II in 3-D!
(Apologies- No, this post is not in 3-D) I posted last week about An Open(?) Question about Prime Producing Polynomails I got several emails about the post with more information, inspiring this post! All the math in this post…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retail Remodeling Spurts W-Fi, 25 Years ago.
Fascinating computer history piece. A meeting that spurred the standards for Wifi. See why standards are important?In ComputerWorld: " ... If you're reading this story over Wi-Fi, thank a department store designer. .... …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Jet vs Amazon
Finally had a chance to look at the e-commerce sales venture Jet. Heavily promoted. Well constructed. Which makes a particular point of Amazon price comparisons. $50 a year membership, considerable savings claims. Bundling…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Security vs Quantum Computing
In CACM: How will security have to be improved at the approach of quantum computing? Technical thoughts.
From insideHPC
DDNtool Streamlines File System Monitoring at Oak Ridge
Over at Oak Ridge, Eric Gedenk writes that monitoring the status of complex supercomputer systems is an ongoing challenge. Now, Ross Miller from OLCF has developed DDNtool, which provides a single interface to 72 controllers …
From The Eponymous Pickle
CartoDB Expanding Tools
Recall using some visualzations developed with CartoDB. Easy to use. Now there are many more credible competitors in the GEO visualization space. About constructing value from location. In GigaOM. " ... CartoDB raises…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: HPC Systems Specialist at Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech is seeking an HPC Systems Specialist in our Job of the Week.
The post Job of the Week: HPC Systems Specialist at Virginia Tech appeared first on insideHPC.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmented Gaming. Linking Location and Wearable
Location expands beyond retail to gaming. Wearable makes it always available. New kinds of Augmentation. Augmented gamification?Pokémon GO app announced with GPS support and Fitbit-like wearable ..."... The Pokémon Company…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Commerce on CloudB2C Brand Experience
Brought to my attention:" ... Your customers search more on smartphones but buy more on tablets. They also place orders online for pick up in store. The point is to be everywhere. IBM Commerce on Cloud lets you build a seamless…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Polynomial Growth Puzzle
Correcting an erratum in our quantum algorithms textbook Cropped from source Paul Bachmann was the first person to use -notation. This was on page 401 of volume 2 of his mammoth four-part text Analytic Number Theory, which was…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Polynomial Growth Puzzle
Correcting an erratum in our quantum algorithms textbook Cropped from source Paul Bachmann was the first person to use -notation. This was on page 401 of volume 2 of his mammoth four-part text Analytic Number Theory, which was…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Will AI Work in the Real World?
The last AI winter essentially started with this point. How will AI work in the messy and inconsistent real world? It works well already in focused approaches to narrow context worlds. Eric Schmidt of Alphabet (Google) on…
From insideHPC
Thomas Lippert on Why the Human Brain Project Needs HPC and Data Analytics Infrastructures
In this video from the Neuroinformatics 2015 Conference, Thomas Lippert from Jülich presents: Why Does the Human Brain Project Need HPC and Data Analytics Infrastructures? HBP, the human brain project, is one of two European …
From insideHPC
BAW in Germany to Install Additional Bull Supercomputer
Bull Atos will provide a second High Performance Computing cluster to the German Waterways Engineering and Research Institute (BAW). Following the installation of the first computer in 2012, the Federal Agency selected a Bull…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Qualcomm Advanced Drone Systems
In Wired: How quickly this area of technology has been growing. Social adaption and regulation are still far behind. Technical details here. " ... Now, Qualcomm is trying to become the default central nervous system for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Engineering Mindsets .
A view of the book Applied Minds. by Guru Madhavan. Here I would suggest that the engineering mindset has taken over vast realms of value over the last three decades. Yes, both scientific discovery and design methods are important…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Testing Grocery Delivery
More online retail infrastructure developments:" ... Google Inc. will start testing a delivery service for fresh food and groceries in two U.S. cities later this year, stepping up competition with online retailer Amazon.com Inc…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: The Chemistry of Squid Camouflage
Interesting research. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From Schneier on Security
Wanted: Cryptography Products for Worldwide Survey
In 1999, Lance Hoffman, David Balenson, and others published a survey of non-US cryptographic products. The point of the survey was to illustrate that there was a robust international market in these products, and that US-only…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tiniest Legos are Ready to Work for us
In CACM: The robot moves slowly along its track, pausing regularly to reach out an arm that carefully scoops up a component. ... The tiniest Lego: a tale of nanoscale motors, rotors, switches and pumps ... Inspired by biology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Control Tower for Holistic Optimization
In Forbes, by Steve Banker: Further examination of the evolution of the Business Sphere. The control tower metaphor is new to me, with an implication of more real time operations. Interesting numbers included" ..... They…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Economic Change with Smart Phone Activity
Clever approach and data source. We looked at other measures like creativity with related methods.Can mobile phone data predict economic change?" ... This paper describes a structural break model to correctly detect the date…
From insideHPC
Video: HPC for the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan
Zachary Cobell from ARCADIS-US presented this talk at the HPC User Forum. "As a global leader for designing sustainable coastlines and waterways, ARCADIS believes in developing multi-faceted, integrated solutions to restore, …