Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2017
From Putting People First
[Book] Think like an anthropologist
![[Book] Think like an anthropologist](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
Think Like An Anthropologist by Matthew Engelke Pelican, August 2017, 339 pages [Start reading – Amazon link] How does anthropology help us understand who we are? What can it tell us about culture, from Melanesia to the City
…
From insideHPC
What Lies Ahead for HPC Cooling?
"To meet the ambitious targets for exascale computing, many cooling companies are exploring optimizations and innovative methods that will redefine cooling architectures for the next generation of HPC systems. Here, some of the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Coke Digital Vending, Now with AI
How…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Scientific Visualization Developer at Kitware
Kitware is seeking a Scientific Visualization Developer in our Job of Week. "Kitware is seeking to hire highly skilled Research and Development Engineers (R&D Engineers) to join our Scientific Computing team and contribute to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drones Accurately Reading RFID Tag Positions
MIT figured out a better way for drones to use RFID technology
With a clever hack by Dani Deahl @danideahl in TheVerge
" .... MIT’s new solution, called Rfly, allows a drone to read RFID tags without strapping a giant reader…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa, Be More Human
Excellent piece on the big challenge, an extension of the long known Eliza Effect. And its implications for computing use in new ways, today and tomorrow. A company like Amazon wants to push this further, beyond assistance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Earthquakes with Machine Learning
Broad idea has been around for years. Are we getting closer? Gets heavily into accuracy and risk of different kinds of errors here. We worked with them on machine failure analysis and prediction, which has some similar profiles…
From insideHPC
TensorFlow Copy
Sponsored Post Researchers at Google and Intel recently collaborated to extract the maximum performance from Intel® Xeon and Intel® Xeon Phi processors running TensorFlow*, a leading deep learning and machine learning framework…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning for Humans
Nice piece ...
Machine Learning for Humans By Vishal Maini Writing about AI/ML, growing @YupTechnologies. Previously @Upstart, @Yale, @TrueVenturesTEC.
Simple, plain-English explanations accompanied by math, code, and real-world…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Bioluminescent Squid
There's a beautiful picture of a tiny squid in this New York Times article on bioluminescence -- and a dramatic one of a vampire squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news…
From The Noisy Channel
Autocomplete and User Experience
The previous post focused on how to determine the best autocomplete suggestions based on query probability and query performance. In this post, we’ll dive into some user experience concerns specific to autocomplete.
Less is More…From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Alexa Does Multiroom Music
Was recently rumored and Walter Riker just pointed out that if you went to the App and Smart Homes - >Groups you could set up a broadcast group of Echo devices. Combine them in any way you want. It was quick and easy to set…
From insideHPC
Enter Your Team in the ISC 2018 Student Cluster Competition
Applications are now being accepted for the ISC 2018 Student Cluster Competition. Entering its 33rd year, ISC High Performance offers students a unique opportunity to learn how HPC influences our world and day-to-day learning…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Quantum Theory, Explained
A descriptive/historical view of Quantum theory. Not very technical, but you do have to care about the history of its exploration and explanation. Nicely done in Quanta Magazine,
Quantum Theory Rebuilt From Simple Physical Principles…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retailwire Survey on AI and the Supply Chain
Of interest, requires registration:
Study Results:: A.I.’s advancing role in fueling the retail supply chain
See results of RetailWire’s study of nearly 200 retail industry execs and managers
In the last decade, tech developers
Read…
From insideHPC
Magnolia Supercomputer Powers Research at University of Southern Mississippi
Advanced Clustering Technologies has installed a new supercomputer at the University of Southern Mississippi. Called Magnolia, the system will support research and training in computational and data-enabled science and engineering…
From insideHPC
David Barkai Joins XTREME Design as the company Looks to Bring Cloud HPC to U.S.
Today XTREME Design Inc. announced that Dr. David Barkai has joined the company as an adviser. As a Japanese startup offering cloud-based, virtual supercomputing-on-demand, XTREME Design hopes to tap Dr. Barkai's extensive HPC…
From insideHPC
USRA Upgrade D-Wave Quantum Computer to 2000 Qubits
Today the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) announced it has upgraded its current quantum annealing computer to a D-Wave 2000Q system. The computer offers the promise for solving challenging problems in a variety…
From insideHPC
Video: DDN Burst Buffer
Justin Glen and Daniel Richards from DDN presented this talk at the HPC Advisory Council Australia Conference. "Burst Buffer was originally created to checkpoint-restart applications and has evolved to help accelerate applications…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sony's Smart Speaker Powered by Google Assistant
Another example of a smart speaker. Powered by Google Assistant, the same intelligence that is powering Google Home. An example of voice activated virtual assistance. Sony's involvement is interesting.
Sony LF-S50G Wireless…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Introduction to Imitation Learning
Good piece on the topic. Starts with an overview based on games, then does get technical. Still basically shows that this is hard, except in narrow contexts. But it may be the best way to get us to more general intelligence…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Nature of Mixed Reality
Have noted Microsoft's use of the mixed reality term. To me its just confusing, and unless Microsoft completely takes over the market, seems a waste of time and attention to think about. Are newly available capabilities and…
From Schneier on Security
Russian Hacking Tools Codenamed WhiteBear Released
Kaspersky Labs released a highly sophisticated set of hacking tools from Russia called WhiteBear. From February to September 2016, WhiteBear activity was narrowly focused on embassies and consular operations around the world.…