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 U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of September 14
Wednesday, September 16, 2015 Hearing: Achieving the Promise of Health Information Technology: Improving Care Through Patient Access to Their Records Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee 10 am | 430 Dirksen…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
NIST Invites Comments on U.S. Participation in International Cybersecurity Standards
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is accepting public comments on a new interagency report advocating U.S. participation in international cybersecurity standardization. The report identifies four interrelated…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
In Memoriam: Joseph Traub
Computing pioneer Jospeh Traub passed away on August 24. ACM recognized him as an ACM Fellow in 1994 for his research on information-based complexity and parallel computing, for his contributions to U.S. science policy, and for…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
President Obama Establishes National Strategic Computing Initiative
President Obama signed an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative to ensure the U.S. remains on the leading-edge of research, development, and deployment of high-performance computing. This government…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Light Transmitting Data
In CWorld. Aka Wi-Fi. We looked at this for some specialized retail applications, it has been around for sometime. It still does not transmit through walls or around corners. But we all use lighting broadly. Short non…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Surge of Digital Assistants
A discussion in the Cognitive Systems Institute group in Linkedin on the topic. Most recently about Facebook's M. Join us. Assistants are a useful way to focus current AI/Cognitive capabilities selectively, for scalingPosts…
From insideHPC
Bob Sorensen from IDC Presents: Best Practices in Private Sector Cyber Security
IDC developed a set of cybersecurity case studies of US commercial organizations in order to learn: What security problems they have experienced, changes that they have made to address them, and new underlying security procedures…
From insideHPC
Australian Bureau of Meteorology to Manage Cray Workloads with Altair PBS Pro
Today Altair announced that its PBS Professional has been chosen to manage workloads for the new Cray supercomputer to be installed at the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), Australia's national weather, climate and water agency.
…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration ABIE Award Winners
The Anita Borg Institute (ABI), a non-profit organization focused on the advancement of women in computing, has announced the winners of the 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) ABIE Awards. Each year, the GHC ABIE Awards recognize…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computing: The Human Experience
Brought to my attention by Myra Snyder, nice idea. Will connect further. Agree with the point below that this has not been attempted before. It is much more than just another film about Steve Jobs. So many have contributed…
From insideHPC
Czech Republic Steps Up with 2 Petaflop SGI ICE X Supercomputer
Today SGI and IT4Innovations national supercomputing center in the Czech Republic announced the deployment of the Salomon supercomputer. With a peak performance of 2 Petaflops, the Salomon supercomputer is twenty times more powerful…
From insideHPC
Altair, Intel and Amazon Offer HPC Challenge
For companies looking to test the viability of engineering in the cloud, Altair has teamed with Intel and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer an “HPC Challenge” for product design. In a nutshell, the program provides free cycles…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Team, Computer Vulnerabilities, and the NSA
When the National Security Administration (NSA) -- or any government agency -- discovers a vulnerability in a popular computer system, should it disclose it or not? The debate exists because vulnerabilities have both offensive…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
New Free APCS curriculum using Processing and GitHub
I found this on a mailing list last week. I haven’t looked to closely at it since we haven’t decided to go with AP CSP at my school yet but it sounds interesting.
I posted my new APCS course that uses Processing and GitHub…
From insideHPC
Swiss CSCS to Power Weather Forecasts with GPUs on Cray CS-Storm
Today Cray announced that the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) has installed a Cray CS-Storm cluster supercomputer to power the operational numerical weather forecasts run by the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Update on Fusion Research
Has long been an interest of mine. Almost took a turn to physics for that reason, but it has been a full thirty years of government funded research with little to show. Now some results moving forward, with indications that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Discover, Access, Distill
Good piece, reasonable and useful way to look at it. As long as you include ... 'deliver' in the distill part. I have too often seen big projects emerge and then assume that by demonstration the results would be well implemented…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Spotlight on the 2015 Faces of Computing Video Contest: How Does Computing Better our World?
Once again I find myself writing a blog post in a hospital setting and I can’t help but marvel at the wonders of computing technology; over the past week my dad has undergone exhaustive pre-op screening to determine whether he…
From Schneier on Security
Security Cartoon
"Security vs. privacy."...
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Funding the Automated Statistician
Fundamentally a very old idea. But much maligned by statisticians. Our own experiments in this area might be called semi-automated. Were step by step, with close connections to key needs from business process definitions,…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House Smart Cities Initiative
The White House has kicked off the first ever Smart Cities Week (September 15-17, 2015) in Washington, DC, announcing new steps in support of a new National Smart Cities Initiative. The National Smart Cities Initiative will invest…
From insideHPC
Next-generation Subsurface Flow Simulations on Titan
Researchers are using the Titan supercomputer to power next-generation subsurface flow simulations. Improved models could benefit carbon sequestration, contaminant transport, and oil recovery research.
The post Next-generation…From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamifying An Internet of Toothbrushes
I heard the general idea mentioned years ago. Toothbrushes detecting how kids brush and gamifying the interaction to promote brushing. Now Sonicare is taking it further. Link the brush to the internet and make it a game. With…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Metro Group and Alibaba
Visited and analyzed methods of the German Metro Group retail chain. In particular their innovation center in Germany. They are the seventh largest retailer on earth. Evan Schuman analyzes their recent deal with Alibaba, with…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The hacker culture is winning
Driven by companies like Google, the hacker spirit is winning. Though we fail to see it, our culture is being hacked. One annoying element of this culture has become ubiquitous: constant updates. The old-school software industry…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analyzing Spoken Word Content
How Veritone's Cognitive Platform Analyzes Spoken-Word ContentThe next frontier: How do you understand and act upon information that is not written? Veritone has an app for that.What if somebody did for voice content what Google…
From insideHPC
E4 Benchmarks EnginSoft CFD on ARM64
Today E4 Computer Engineering announced the results of tests carried out independently on a GPU cluster provided to EnginSoft Italy, a premier global consulting firm in the field of Simulation Based Engineering Science (SBES)…
From insideHPC
Video: Panel on US Plans for Advancing HPC with NSCI
In this video plus transcripts from the 2015 HPC User Forum in Broomfield, Bob Sorensen from IDC moderates a panel discussion on the the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI). "Established by an Executive Order by President…
From insideHPC
Transcript: Will Koella from DoD Discusses the NSCI Initiative
In this video from the 2015 HPC User Forum, Will Koella from the Department of Defense discusses National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI). Established by an Executive Order by President Obama, NSCI has a mission to ensure…
From insideHPC
Transcript: Doug Kothe from Oak Ridge Discusses the NSCI Initiative
In this video from the 2015 HPC User Forum, Doug Kothe from Oak Ridge discusses National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI). Established by an Executive Order by President Obama, NSCI has a mission to ensure the United States…