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
GPUs Power Low-Cost Supercomputer Solution from Nor-Tech
"We figured out a way to get consumer-grade cards into a 4U chassis,” said Nor-Tech’s Vice President of Engineering, Dom Daninger and his team tested and retested the prototype until they were satisfied that their solution would…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking the Game Show "Press Your Luck"
Fascinating story about a man who figured out how to hack the game show "Press Your Luck" in 1984....
From insideHPC
PEZY & ExaScaler Step Up on the Green500 List with Immersive Cooling
PEZY Computing from Japan has earned the top three rankings on the Green500 list, using a 3M Fluorinert Electronic Liquid in an immersive cooling system built by ExaScaler Inc. The Green500 is a biannual ranking of the most energy…
From insideHPC
Video: Worldwide HPC Market & 2015-2019 Market Forecast
"Intersect360 Research's annual HPC market model and forecast shows modest growth in 2014. Despite ongoing weakness in the public sector, commercial usage of HPC drove the market to $29.4 billion in 2014, a year-over-year growth…
From insideHPC
SELinux at Lockheed: A New Multi-Level Security Initiative
"Historically cyber security in HPC has been limited to detecting intrusions rather than designing security from the beginning in a holistic, layered approach to protect the system. SELinux has provided the needed framework to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Safari Storytelling in Jungle Jims
The question and piece below made me think of two things. One, the relationship to storytelling and the ability to do that in a virtual or video environment. Second the unique Jungle Jim's grocery store in nearby Fairfield…
From Schneier on Security
Buying an Online Reputation
The story of a reporter who set up a fake business and then bought Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and online reviews. It was surprisingly easy and cheap....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet of Things Architecture
Brought to my attention. Thingworx. Presentation today was a useful introduction to IOT architectures, models, security and design decisions. My interest is the interaction of analytics to the IOT edge. Nicely done talk…
From Schneier on Security
Bringing Frozen Liquids through Airport Security
Gizmodo reports that UK airport security confiscates frozen liquids: "He told me that it wasn't allowed so I asked under what grounds, given it is not a liquid. When he said I couldn't take it I asked if he knew that for sure…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kaizen Meets Hitachi AI for Workflow Productivity
Via Conor Cusack: Quite an interesting application direction:Hitachi puts AI Boss in Charge to Boost Productivity By David Nield Forget about robots taking over your job — they might be more likely to take over the role of your…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autonomous Drones Build Bridge
In the Verge: Video. Fascinating example. Particularly interested in the autonomy of such experiments, which relates to other swarming experiments. The future of this? Probably more in sensory/observation than construction…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bloomberg Marketing Analytics Tool
In Adage: Interesting play. I do wonder about the overall objectivity that is involved. But a directed marketing mix play is intriguing. Dueling tools among multiple advertising venues? What other value propositions could…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing
The new ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing challenges high school seniors in the United States to develop innovative solutions using their knowledge of computer science. Four winners will each be awarded $10,000…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Excitement around K-12 CS Education, but there’s work to be done by the CS Community
The following is a blog post by Ran Libeskind-Hadas, R. Michael Shanahan Professor and Computer Science Department Chair at Harvey Mudd College, Co-Chair of CRA’s Education subcommittee (CRA-E), and former Computing Community…
From insideHPC
IBM Storage With OpenStack
While there is much discussion and products in the market regarding cloud computing and the ability to spin up a virtual machines quickly and efficiently, the fact remains that without planning for cloud based storage, the data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Potential of Virtual Reality
Insightful piece, In ReadwriteWeb: " .... Virtual Reality Meets Actual Reality: Why VR Is Harder Than You Think .... HTC, Sony and Felix and Paul Studios discuss the potential and challenges of VR. ... "
From The Eponymous Pickle
ACM E-Book Learning Center
I was reminded that the ACM, which I have been a member of for many years, has a learning center that contains hundreds of free to read e-books for members. Always expanding, easy to use for reference. I also contribute items…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
FTC PrivacyCon 2016 – Call for Privacy and Security Research Presentations
The FTC invites presentation proposals on consumer privacy and security issues in the commercial sector for a privacy conference, PrivacyCon, to be held on January 14 in Washington, D.C. The conference is intended for security…
From insideHPC
Video: Communication Frameworks for HPC and Big Data
“This talk will focus on programming models and their designs for upcoming exascale systems with millions of processors and accelerators. Current status and future trends of MPI and PGAS (UPC and OpenSHMEM) programming models…
From insideHPC
BSC and Integrating Persistent Data and Parallel Programming Models
Toni Cortés from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center presented this talk at the HPC Advisory Council Spain Conference. "BSC is the National Supercomputing Facility in Spain and was officially constituted in April 2005. BSC-CNS…
From insideHPC
HPC in Siesmic Processing and Interpreation and Reservoir Modeling
Oil and gas are becoming increasingly harder to find. This article looks at how oil and gas companies are using cutting edge technology, like high performance computing (HPC) servers, compute accelerators and flash storage arrays…
From insideHPC
The Increase in Processing Demands of Seismic Computing
Substantial challenges loom for the Oil and Gas sector, as problem sizes, resolution requirements and business pressures to reduce computing costs all continue to increase. To address these challenges, suppliers like Intel and…
From insideHPC
Video: Imperial College: 30 Million HPC Jobs a Year and Counting
"A university environment can be a challenge in many ways, with a wide variety of differing demands from more than a hundred different research groups, so how can a High Performance Computing group hope to meet the requirements…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Virtual BBC Micro:Bit Now in Beta
Curious about the BBC MicroBit? There is a new web site about it that includes a virtual Micro:bit computer. There are tutorials and videos and various other bits and bobs of information at the site as well. There is even the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Walgreens to Promote Behavior with Wearables
In Evan Schuman's column in Computer World. Contains an interesting detailed analysis of behavior." ... Walgreens wants to use wearables to give instant discounts for exercising ... Walgreens will track the level of exercise…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Junk Charts: Data Visualizations Reviewed
Recently connected with Kaiser Fung, Who writes the famous Junk Charts Blog that I have often mentioned here. I had read about bad visualizing years ago in books like: How to Lie with Statistics, But never saw a source that…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF CISE’s Important Role in Smart Cities Initiative
National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for the Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) James Kurose has issued the following letter to the community describing CISE’s role in the White…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Eyeliner Connecting to the Internet
In SiliconAngle: " ... When eyeliner connects to the Internet: L’Oreal hints at IoT plans ... " An unusual connection to the Internet of Things. How broadly will we see commonly used products being connected? How will…
From Schneier on Security
SYNful Knock Attack Against Cisco Routers
FireEye is reporting the discovery of persistent malware that compromises Cisco routers: While this attack could be possible on any router technology, in this case, the targeted victims were Cisco routers. The Mandiant team found…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Glasses Foil Facial Recognition
In the CACM: We discovered this in a retail test. Here much more detail and data. Reminds me of other cases in the 70s where it was discovered that putting simple changes in a face, like adding a mole or band aid could significantly…