Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2020
From Putting People First
The effect of Covid-19 on education in Africa
This report, and the survey findings behind it, provides a unique insight into the perspectives of EdTech experts regarding the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education in Africa. It is based on the findings of a survey of…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Why Computer Science Teachers Should Read Books
Since I retired I have been reading more computer science related books. You may have read my book reviews on Humble Pi, Weapons of Math Destruction, or Computer Science in K-12. More and more I realize that I missed out on a…
From insideHPC
Altair Acquires HPC Workload Management Specialist Univa
Altair has acquired Univa, an enterprise-grade workload management, scheduling, and optimization solutions company for HPC and artificial intelligence (AI) on-premises and in the cloud. Altair, which designs data analytics, product…
From insideHPC
Qumulo Launches on AWS Outposts for File Storage and Data Management
SEATTLE – Sept. 15, 2020 – Qumulo, a cloud file data platform that helps organizations store and manage file data, today announced availability on AWS Outposts. AWS Outposts is a managed service that extends Amazon Web Services…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Towards Robotic Chemistry
Better, faster, cheaper are the claims being made, with links to previous IBM work in the space. Worked with a company analysis lab, and know the time and complexity involved. This will replace experienced personnel.
Robotics…
From insideHPC
Xilinx Ships Multi-Function Telco Accelerator Card for 5G O-RAN Virtual Baseband Unit Markets
SAN JOSE, Sept. 15, 2020 – Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced the T1 Telco Accelerator Card for O-RAN distributed units (O-DUs) and virtual baseband units (vBBUs) in 5G networks. Built using the same Xilinx silicon and…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Ken Regan Turned 61
Happy birthday to Ken Ken Regan is of course my partner on GLL. He is faculty in the computer science department at the University of Buffalo. His PhD was in 1986 from Oxford University and it was titled On the separation of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Critical Failure Detection, Prediction and Risk Analysis
We did related work which included risk analyses on solutions of many types, including AI machine learning and classical analytics. Even those that could be considered less than 'critical'. Typically using elements of predictive…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Inconsistent Benchmarking Found
Important finding. Further classification of form of inconsistency would also be useful for later pre checking new papers.
.
Researchers find ‘inconsistent’ benchmarking across 3,867 AI research papers By Kyle Wiggers in
The…
From Schneier on Security
Former NSA Director Keith Alexander Joins Amazon’s Board of Directors
This sounds like a bad idea.
From Schneier on Security
Matt Blaze on OTP Radio Stations
Matt Blaze discusses an interesting mystery about a Cuban one-time-pad radio station, and a random number generator error that probably helped arrest a pair of Russian spies in the US.
From Schneier on Security
New Bluetooth Vulnerability
There’s a new unpatched Bluetooth vulnerability:
The issue is with a protocol called Cross-Transport Key Derivation (or CTKD, for short). When, say, an iPhone is getting ready to pair up with Bluetooth-powered device, CTKD’s…From insideHPC
OpenPOWER Foundation Unveils IBM Hardware/Software Contributions at OpenPOWER Summit
Today at OpenPOWER Summit 2020, IBM announced it is contributing two technologies to the OpenPOWER community: the A2O Power processor core, an “out-of-order” follow-up to the A2I core and associated FPGA environment; and Open…
From insideHPC
The Race for a Unified Analytics Warehouse
This white paper, "The Race for a Unified Analytics Warehouse," from our friends over at Vertica discusses how the race for a unified analytics warehouse is on. The data warehouse has been around for almost three decades. Shortly…
From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
From The Eponymous Pickle
Radar Trends
See the O'Reilly Radar Trends. Very nicely done, brought up a number of interesting surprises. But many have been on my list for sometime. Its now on my on going reading list:
Radar trends to watch: September 2020
Trends
By…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Science Fails If it Looks too Good to be True
Not sure if I completely agree. Have seen very good results come out of an analytic solution. I agree that if it makes recommendations very different from current practice, or suggests buying into high risk, depends on unknown…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Announcing the 2020 Computing Innovation Fellows
This past spring, when hiring practices were rapidly changing due to COVID-19, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC) launched the CIFellows 2020 program, with strong support from…
From insideHPC
AMD COVID-19 HPC Fund Adds 18 Institutions and 5 Petaflops of Supercomputer Processing Power to Assist Researchers Fighting COVID-19 Pandemic
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Sept. 14, 2020 — AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced a second round of high-performance technology contributions to assist in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. AMD is now contributing high-end…
From Computational Complexity
An interesting serendipitous number
Last seek I blogged about two math problems of interest to me here.
One of them two people posted answers, which was great since I didn't know how to solve them and now I do. Yeah! I blogged about that here.
From The Eponymous Pickle
How AI Fits into Today's Economy
TNW looks into AI, and provides a non technical view, points to Prediction Machines Book. good starting place regarding economics involved.
A realistic picture of how AI fits into today’s economy
There’s a difference between a
Where…
From insideHPC
Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40 Billion
Nvidia and SoftBank Group Corp. (SBG) have announced an agreement under which Nvidia will acquire Arm Limited from SBG and the SoftBank Vision Fund in a transaction valued at $40 billion. The acquisition, scheduled for completion…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Antipatterns and Tech Transforms
Antipatterns that are derailing technology transformations | in McKinsey
By Sven Blumberg, Thomas Delaet, and Kartikeya Swami
Ten ‘antipatterns’ that are derailing technology transformations
Shortsighted solutions to recurring problems…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blogging Note
I am being forced by Google into using the latest version of Blogger now. And it has led me into an increase of errors. And more editing. I will fix them as I see them. If you notice something that I have missed, and is
…
From insideHPC
What Do You Mean “What’s My Workload?” I Have Hundreds of Them!
In this sponsored post, Curtis Anderson, Senior Software Architect at Panasas, Inc., takes a look at what Panasas is calling Dynamic Data Acceleration (DDA) and how it dramatically improves HPC performance in a mixed-workload…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NVidia Buys ARM for 40 Billion, Plans new AI Research Center
Considerable detail in this ExtremeTech piece, On China connections.
Nvidia Buys ARM for $40 Billion, Plans New AI Research Center
In ExtremeTech by Joel Hruska
The Nvidia-ARM rumors we’ve been reporting on for the past few months…
From BLOG@CACM
Trolleyspotting
The Trolley Problem is not for solving, but for exploring.
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Ensemble Methods, the How and Why
Nicely done piece on the topic. The general overiew motivates the use of all kinds of group solutions, even without analytics methods involved. We often used them if we were at all uncertain of best solution methods. They…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Convex Algorithms
Continuous can beat discrete Nisheeth Vishnoi is a professor at Yale University in the computer science department. The faculty there is impressive and includes many of the top researchers in the world. The CS faculty is pretty…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa and HIPAA
Skill directions in healthcare. Requirements are interesting.
Amazon Opens Applications for HIPAA-Eligible Alexa Skills
Eric Hal Schwartz on September 11, 2020 at 1:00 pm
Amazon is expanding its HIPAA-compliant Alexa skill program…