Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2018
From The Eponymous Pickle
Match Retail Search via Card Transactions
Remember discussing how such a thing could be done, and how the approach could bring along lots of additional information. Probably a privacy violation, we concluded it was not possible. But then again Amazon now has a Prime…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Competing with Amazon
Brings up 'Less is More 'book 'Paradox of Choice' but is that actually true? Certainly Amazon has shown more assortment is better, much better. Have they perfected curation?
Less is more’ when competing with Amazon by
Through…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Thermodynamic Computing Workshop – Call for White Papers
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will hold a workshop from January 3rd to 5th, 2019 in Hawaii to create a vision for thermodynamic computing, a statement of research needs, and a summary of the current state of understanding…
From The Noisy Channel
Thanks Vibhu.
Thanks Vibhu. There are a lot of published case studies about A/B testing in general, but I’m not sure what’s published specifically about A/B testing for search. But I’d recommend reading what Ronny Kohavi and his team havehttps…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Again Considering Space Elevators
Been following this for some time. Not much mention lately. But always thought the strength of the cable needed was beyond any material known. Good overview in the WP.
And now Japan is planning a serious test:
Japan to conduct…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Winter?
Some of us are afraid to ask, but O'Reilly brings it up and points to evidence. My team wintered the last one, and it was not pretty. Its not that we didn't achieve much, we produced millions for the enterprise. But it just…
From insideHPC
Computational Biophysics in the Petascale Computing Era
Dr. Rommie E. Amaro from UC San Diego gave this talk at the Blue Waters Symposium. "In this talk I will discuss how the BlueWaters Petascale computing architecture forever altered the landscape and potential of computational
…
From insideHPC
NAG Awarded Chapter status by Women-in-HPC
Today the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) announced that it has been recognized as one of the first Chapters in the new Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC) Pilot Program. "The WHPC Chapter Pilot will enable us to reach…
From Schneier on Security
New Book Announcement: Click Here to Kill Everybody
I am pleased to announce the publication of my latest book: Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World. In it, I examine how our new immersive world of physically capable computers affects…
From Computational Complexity
The Rule of Threes/Astology
On Aug 16, 2018 Aretha Franklin died. A famous singer.
On Aug 18 2018 Kofi Anan died. A famous politician.
On Aug 25, 2018 John McCain died. A famous politician.
On Aug 26, 2018 Neil Simon died, a famous playwright.
For 12…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dealing with Followup Questions in Alexa
How can we deal with common expectations of conversation, like followup questions? See the reference to the upcoming paper. The blog linked to often has interesting, but technical results. Still, often useful to scan, since…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots in Skype Need to Augment Meetings
Not normally a user of Skype, but I have some correspondents who use it. So I revisited the current Skype system as I needed it. There has been some controversy about recent re-design. I loaded it up on an older i-Padrobots…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Alexa Connects with 20K Devices
Impressive. But what is more important, the ability to be a working part of an IOT, or to be further along creeping towards conversational intelligence? In the latter, I believe that today Google Assistant is ahead. I have…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Baidu Develops No-Code AI Platform
Baidu in China continues to do some interesting things. Good, as long as 'no coding skills' also means generating an architecture that promotes maintenance and future extension of development. It should. Integrated security…
From insideHPC
DOE Selects 13 Projects to Advance Manufacturing with HPC
In this video from the 2016 HPC User Forum in Austin, Wayne O Miller from LLNL announces a new RFP for the HPC4mfg program. "Today the HPC4Mfg group at LLNL announced nearly $3 million for 13 projects to stimulate the use of
…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (September 1st, 2018)
Our PCs and servers run x64 processors, most of them made by Intel and AMD. In my home, all my x64 processors are made by Intel… except the processor of my PlayStation 4…. so I was surprised to read that AMD and Intel each hold…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Considerable Value of Accidental Pinhole and Pinspeck Cameras
The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Influence of Blockchains
Now that I have taken a look at non-blockchain architected distributed ledgers (See Iota's in the tags) its useful to think again about their broad usage in industry. Where and why and impact? I saw this piece in the DSC
Blockchain…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Search Gives you Relevant Subtopics
A considerable advance. It does also complicate things, you get more information, and perhaps you just want the right information. But it is a noble experiment I will be trying. Rolling out everywhere now.
Helping you find…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blog Statistics Update
I comment on this blog's milestones from time to time. Now it has been around in this form since 2005. It existed in previous internal enterprise versions since 2002. It has recorded 17,159 posts, and over 2 million hits.
From insideHPC
Mellanox to Power Frontera Supercomputer with HDR 200G InfiniBand
Today Mellanox announced that HDR 200 gigabit per second InfiniBand has been selected to accelerate the new large-scale supercomputer to be deployed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). The system, named Frontera, will…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Rolling Assistants: Temi
Now that the Kuri assistant has failed, will there soon be more smart speakers with cameras on wheels to come at our command, mix drinks and fetch our slippers? At the recent IFA show in Berlin, a new one emerges called Temi…
From insideHPC
UberCloud moves HPC Workloads to the Cloud with ANSYS Discovery Live
In this video, Thomas Francis from the UberCloud leads a discussion on how engineers and IT in the various organizations can benefit from Cloud computing. "UberCloud's pre-packaged ANSYS cloud solution comes with a fully interactive…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Earthquake Shocks
An example of application we saw early on for neural pattern prediction, now coming to fruition. Here in Nature. Other apparently subtle, but important links to patterns?
Artificial intelligence nails predictions of earthquake…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shopping Virtual Wal-Marts
Wal-Mart takes you to the virtual edge. Never thought of them doing this, but here they are. How much will it entice, engage? So is this meant to be a view of a real virtual Wal-mart, with all the intricacies, or some virtual…
From insideHPC
Agenda Posted: EAGE Workshop HPC for Upstream in Latin America
EAGE has posted the agenda for their first-ever EAGE Workshop HPC for Upstream in Latin America. The event takes place Sept. 21-22 in Santander, Colombia. "Unlike any time in history, we are witnessing a rush to improve speed…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Computer Science Postdoctoral Scholar at LBNL
LBNL is seeking a Computer Science Postdoctoral Scholar in our Job of the Week. "Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division has an opening for a Computer Science Postdoctoral Scholar. Develop performance modeling and analytical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI and the Better Hand
Games have always been a good testing place for AI. Now that Chess, Checkers have been professionally 'solved' with AI, other games with randomness and behavioral elements are being addressed. Of course these games are still…
From Communications of the ACM
Discovering Bugs, or Ensuring Success?
Finding errors is not the same as making certain a software product works correctly.